Meaningless
by PenguinofProse
Summary: What if it wasn't Raven who slept with Bellamy to move on from Finn, but Clarke? How would their relationship develop? An alternative take on seasons one and two.
1. Chapter 1

**a/n I may have got slightly overenthusiastic in the wake of finishing ****_Bellarke in a Bunker_**** and may have written many many other bits and pieces of Bellarke... Please enjoy reading this first instalment of an alternative version of seasons one and two! **

Bellamy had made some big mistakes in his life.

Taking his sister to that dance certainly ranked pretty high up the list, he thought, but nothing quite compared to knowing it was his fault that the lives of three hundred people depended on these puny pink flares being visible from space.

For the thousandth time that day, he cursed himself as a coward. He'd thrown that radio into the river to save himself, and in doing so had risked the lives of hundreds of strangers. In need of reassurance, he turned to the young woman next to him.

"You think they can see it from up there?" He desperately wanted Clarke to say yes, and take some of this guilt from his shoulders.

"I don't know, I hope so. Can you wish on this kind of shooting star?" His brow crinkled at that, but at the look on her face he realised that was the wrong reaction. "Forget it." She said, her voice tinged with bitterness.

"I wouldn't even know what to wish for." He admitted the honest truth, that there were so many things he wished he could do over, do differently, that he didn't even know where to start. "What about you?"

Her gaze was fixed across the fire, where Finn and Raven were wrapped up in each other's eyes.

"I know there are things I should wish for." She began "I should wish for some medicine and winter supplies and peace and for everyone on the Ark to get down here safely."

He let the silence grow, sensing that she wasn't finished talking. And besides, what would he say? She was right; these were the kinds of things a leader should wish for.

He heard her draw a shaky breath.

"Honestly, it's petty and pathetic and definitely not relevant to our survival at all but the thing on my mind right now is that I wish I hadn't been a gullible idiot and slept with some other woman's boyfriend. Somehow trivial teen drama seems like a more comfortable thing to focus on than the bigger picture of mutant deer and giant water snakes and crazed grounders."

She was visibly trying to laugh at herself, but it wasn't quite working out for her. He helped her out by giving a wry chuckle.

"I get that. Sometimes it's good to be distracted by something that's basically meaningless. Keeps your mind off whether or not you're going to die."

"Yeah, I guess."

"For what it's worth, Spacewalker's an idiot. You both deserve better."

He turned and made his way back to his tent. It looked like he would be stewing in this particular pool of regret alone.

…...

He hadn't expected to see Clarke again that night. By his reckoning, that conversation over the flares had been the longest they'd ever spoken without disagreeing in their entire acquaintance. With a slight smile to himself, he figured they'd probably make up for it by arguing twice as much as usual for the following week. It really was a wonder that anything got done in this camp, he thought, with such unconventional leadership.

Half way through removing his shirt, he was rather taken aback when he realised that someone was entering his tent. Maybe it was Roma, he wondered, or Bree. Or maybe both – that had been a pretty great night.

Much to his surprise, Clarke was standing before him, biting her bottom lip. If he'd seen that facial expression on anyone else, he'd have described it as "sheepish". But this was Clarke Griffin, and he was pretty sure that she didn't do "sheepish".

"Hey" she began "so... erm... Thanks for earlier, I guess. I really appreciated what you said."

He huffed a sigh. "Please, don't start mistaking me for someone who cares. Time to move on."

His eyes narrowed in confusion as she took a step, peering up at him from beneath her lashes.

Another step, and a whispered "I thought maybe you could help me with that." She really was very close now, and he could feel her body heat and sense her nervousness.

"What are you doing?"

"Moving on."

She pulled her shirt over her head.

He was aware that he was gaping somewhat, but he hadn't quite expected this evening to involve Clarke Griffin stripping in his tent.

"You said I should distract myself with something basically meaningless. So here I am. Distract me. Meaningless sex is what you do best, right?"

He briefly acknowledged that, when she put it in exactly those words, that accusation hurt. He liked to think there was more to him than that.

"If you're looking for someone to talk you down, tell you that you're just upset and not thinking straight, I'm not that guy."

"Good."

Bellamy wasn't sure what had broken inside him to make this seem like a good idea. She was _Clarke_, and he was _Bellamy_, and with everything that was in him he knew that this had the potential to get messy.

But in a lifetime of bitter regrets and poor decisions and idiotic mistakes, surely one more couldn't hurt.

And, after all, surely it was rude to stop her at this point. She really wasn't wearing very much now. With a sensation that he told himself was resignation, but he had to acknowledge involved a fair amount of excitement, he reached for her.

And when he asked her, some time later "Did that help?" he wasn't surprised to hear her say "yes". He had to admit that, if she'd been the one asking, his answer would have been exactly the same. It made a change, he decided, to sleep with someone and know that her _yes_ was the truth and not just what she thought he wanted to hear.

…...

Clarke could no longer remember a time before sleepless nights were a normal feature of her daily routine. The recent past, with its revelations about the doomed future of the Ark, descent to a perilous Earth, Wells' death and her mother's betrayal, seemed a far cry from her safe and protected childhood.

She had to admit it – maybe "Princess" wasn't so far off the mark.

With a heavy sigh she gave up as a lost cause any chance of further sleep that night. Throwing her clothes back on, she made for the entrance of her tent, just as it opened to reveal the last person she'd been expecting. Correction, twenty-four hours earlier he would have been the last person she was expecting. Now, she wasn't so sure.

"You're up?" Bellamy asked, visibly surprised.

"Yeah." She wasn't really ready to deal with their potentially awkward situation this early in the morning and immediately set out on the offensive. "Knowing that hundreds of people might be dying on the Ark makes it pretty hard to sleep."

"Raven's flares will work." He was clearly trying to reassure himself as much as her.

"Her radio would've worked better." She met his eyes and saw the guilt there, and was surprised by the revelation that she took no pleasure in seeing him beat himself up.

"I know." The apology was there, in his voice. That was enough for now. "Have you seen Octavia?"

"No." She said, somewhat exasperated. "It's Octavia. She's probably chasing butterflies."

"Clarke, I've checked the camp. She's not here." She could hear the genuine fear in his voice, and for a moment her heart went out to him.

"OK. I'll help you find her. Let's check again. I'll go to the dropship, you check the rest of the tents."

"Thank you"

She met his eyes.

"It's OK," she said, "we'll find her." Somewhere, in the back of her mind, it occurred to her that this was not what the Clarke of a couple of days ago would have said. That Clarke would have snapped that she didn't need Bellamy's thanks, that she was only doing this for Octavia. But somewhere along the way, the concern in his voice had come to mean something to her.

Some minutes later she had ascertained that wherever Octavia was, she was certainly not in the dropship. As she made her way down the ramp she could hear Bellamy's voice organising a group to set out into the forest in search of his sister.

Suddenly, he was interrupted by the gasps around him as the delinquents stared up at the heavens, where hundreds of objects were falling, blazing, towards the Earth.

"They didn't work. They didn't see the flares." Raven was clearly spoiling for a fight.

"A meteor shower tells you that?" Bellamy was not entirely succeeding in his attempt to appear in control of the situation.

"It's not a meteor shower, it's a funeral. Hundreds of bodies being returned to the Earth." Clarke avoided his gaze. Nothing good could come of seeing how much he hated himself in that moment.

"This is all because of you!" Raven was seething as she marched towards him.

"I helped you find the radio."

"Yeah, after you jacked it from my pod and trashed it!"

"Yeah, he knows." Clarke interrupted them. "Now he has to live with it."

"I know." He said, his voice raw. "And I know my sister is out there, and I'm going to find her. What are we waiting for? Move out!"

…...

By the time she arrived back to camp with Raven that evening, having somewhat cleared the air regarding Finn and found a radio transmitter to boot, she was fairly sure that Octavia had been found. She deduced this from the fact that she could hear both of the Blakes' raised voices from well outside the camp wall.

"You don't think, O! That's the problem. They killed three of our people today. And if you would've let me kill him when I had the chance, Finn wouldn't be in there dying right now!"

There was something in his voice she hadn't heard before. Some lack of control, approaching dangerously close to hysteria, that made Clarke hurry into the camp with a new sense of urgency.

"Stop blaming me for your mistakes. What happened to Finn is not my fault." Octavia was audibly upset. "I wanted to leave, so if Finn dies in there, that's on you. Everything that's gone wrong is because of you. You got me locked up on the Ark. You wanted me to go to that stupid dance. You got mum killed!"

Clarke drew in a sharp breath. She was sure Octavia didn't mean any of this, sure that she would regret it all in the morning.

Well, she _hoped_ she didn't mean any of this. There was no way Bellamy would continue to function in a world where his sister hated him. And she needed Bellamy to continue to function, because she had to admit that this camp would be at least a little lost without him.

"Mum was floated for having you. She's dead because you're alive. That was her choice." Clarke could hear the tears in Bellamy's voice, this young man who liked to present himself as a fearless leader sniffling like a small child. "I didn't have a choice. My life ended the day you were born!"

She entered the camp in time to see Octavia running away towards the dropship, while Bellamy stalked towards the gate. She met his gaze as he passed her, and saw the regret in his eyes. It was, she reflected, an expression with which she was becoming all too familiar.

_Whatever_, she decided. Bellamy Blake was not her problem. She shouldn't start mistaking herself for someone who cared.

…...

Clarke was certain that she had never felt so thoroughly inept. Finn's wound was stitched but he was clearly deteriorating and she was pretty sure there was poison on that blade. And this wasn't really the ideal environment for solving life or death problems – however hard she tried to clear her mind, the sound of Bellamy upstairs lashing out at that grounder was not exactly conducive to a logical train of thought. She didn't _want_ him to be torturing a grounder. She didn't want him to have another thing on his list of regrets and she didn't want to see the look in his eyes when he realised he'd become a monster. Over and above the sound of lashes and Bellamy's angry shouts, she could hear Octavia's screams, and she feared that the siblings' relationship was going to be rather different after today.

This was hopeless. She needed the grounder to tell her about the poison. And she needed Bellamy to pull himself together.

Leaving Raven to watch Finn, she made her way upstairs. The sight that greeted her made her stomach churn. The skin on the captive's back was literally shredded, hanging in tatters from his shoulders, but he made not a sound. All the noise was coming from Octavia, who seemed to be alternating between whimpering pitifully and screaming, as if she could feel his pain.

She couldn't believe that the man responsible for this was the same man she had spoken to at that campfire last night. She ran to him and put a tentative hand on his shoulder.

"Bellamy, stop. This is not the way to go about getting the answers you want. This is not who we are. This is not who _you _are." She needed to get through to him, to bring back the man who could be mistaken for someone who cared.

"You know nothing about who I am, Princess." She was taken aback by the venom in his voice. With one last, fierce glare that seemed to take in her and Octavia as well as the captive grounder, he stalked from the room.

…...

The worst thing of all, Bellamy thought, was that she had been _right_. That was not who he was, not who his mother had raised him to be.

He had stomped around the perimeter of the camp for about half an hour, stewing in his anger towards Clarke, towards the grounder, towards Octavia, and most of all towards himself. A storm was picking up and he knew that he ought to get back inside the shelter of the dropship, and get the rest of the delinquents inside too. And the logical part of his brain realised hat he couldn't stay out there all day anyway. People would talk, and he would lose some of the respect on which his leadership depended.

If he was being honest with himself, he also wanted to fix some of his recent mistakes. But he hadn't the first idea as to how to go about doing so.

With a heavy sigh, he marched himself back into the camp and set about herding teenagers into the dropship. He wouldn't allow himself to enter until everyone was accounted for – he told himself this was good leadership, but he knew that he was also trying to postpone the moment where he would have to see his sister and Clarke again.

…...

Clarke didn't want to wonder where Bellamy had got to, but somehow she was doing so anyway. There wasn't much else for her to do, she reasoned. Finn was resting quietly, thanks to the antidote that Octavia had convinced the grounder to show her, and no one else required medical attention. All she had to occupy her was sitting in the dropship, listening to the rising wind and worrying.

He eventually walked in with an air of affected casualness that did nothing to fool her. The storm outside was growing brutal now, and he had clearly put this moment off as long as possible. She pulled the leaver to shut the door and then walked over to him.

"How's Finn?" He began, before she could speak.

"Alive."

"We'll get him cleaned up."

"I really wish that was our only mess."

He had no response for that, as she had known he wouldn't. The silence stretched between them even as the wind howled outside.

"What are we going to do?" She asked, knowing that she didn't need to explain what she meant.

"I don't know." She could see that it was the honest truth, and for the first time in their acquaintance, she couldn't find the will to argue back. Eyes fixed on the ground, avoiding her gaze for all he was worth, he made his way towards his sister on the other side of the dropship.

…...

She should have been surprised when Bellamy entered her tent that night, but somehow she wasn't. He'd avoided her company studiously throughout the duration of the storm and their attempts to patch up the camp well enough to permit a decent night's sleep, yet here he was, with sorrow in his eyes and a determined set to his jaw.

"How are you doing?" She rushed to ask him. "Octavia will forgive you, you know. She loves you too much not to."

"I'm pretty sure you know why I'm here. A clue – it's not for some deep and meaningful chat about my feelings."

With that, he pulled off his shirt.

…...

Later, when he set about gathering his clothes and readying himself to leave, he seemed to be in a more conversational mood.

"Thank you," he said, "for what you said earlier about Octavia. And for... this. And for being so infuriatingly _right_ all the time."

He flashed her that annoyingly attractive grin and left her there, lying in her blankets, staring at his retreating back.

**a/n Thanks for reading! Next up: An alternative ****_Day Trip_****.**


	2. Chapter 2

**a/n Thanks so much for the positive reception for the first chapter - your reviews were super encouraging and I'll definitely be continuing this story with enthusiasm. Happy reading!**

Clarke couldn't repress the feeling of hope that rose in her chest at Kane and Jaha's words. This nearby bunker they were sending her off towards had better live up to her expectations - they urgently needed some decent winter supplies or half the camp would be dead of hypothermia within a couple of months. She was tempted to head off now, on her own, and get a bit of time to herself into the bargain, but the rational part of her brain knew that wouldn't be a smart move.

Apart from anything else, Bellamy didn't like it when people went off on their own.

With that thought, she picked up her pack and went to look for him.

She could hear raised voices as she approached the dropship - she was pretty sure they were Bellamy and Octavia, and it didn't sound like they were making much progress. For a brief moment she considered the correlation between their relationship floundering and her chances of getting laid tonight. _Whatever_, she told herself. There were more important things to worry about at this moment in time. She entered the dropship and decided to pretend she'd heard nothing of their arguing.

"Bellamy." She'd caught him by surprise, and he immediately set out on the offensive.

"The answer is still no. I'm not talking to Jaha."

"Hey, relax." She briefly considered reaching out to place a hand on his arm, but she wasn't quite sure that was something they did. "That's not why I'm here."

"What, then?" He still looked wary.

"The Ark found some old records that show a supply depot not too far from here." She could hear the hope bubbling over in her own voice, but he didn't seem to be in quite the right frame of mind for hope.

"What kind of supplies?"

"The kind that might give us a chance to live through the winter. I'm going to check it out. I could use backup ."

"Why are you asking me?"

"Maybe I don't feel like being around anyone I actually like right now."

The very beginning of a smile began to show at the corners of his mouth – more of a smirk, maybe - and she knew that he had heard the layers of meaning in her words.

"I'll get my stuff, meet you in ten."

…...

Bellamy hoped she wouldn't say it, but he already knew her better than that.

"You know, the first dropship is going to be here soon. Pretty sure you can't avoid Jaha forever."

"I can try." He said, in a tone he hoped would convey that the conversation was closed. Of course, Clarke was never one to keep quiet for his convenience.

"Maybe he'll be lenient." Some chance, he thought.

"I shot the man, Clarke. He's not just going to forgive and forget." Bellamy had not had many second chances gifted to him on a plate in his life to date.

Clarke made a sound somewhere between a huff and a sigh. He wasn't sure what she was more exasperated by; his stubbornness or the fact they hadn't found the depot yet.

"It's supposed to be around here somewhere. There's got to be a door." He could hear the frustration building in her voice just as he could feel it building in his own chest, and was struck by an urgent need to be out of her company, not listening to her tell him things he already knew or thought or hoped.

"Let's just split up, cover more ground." He started to move off in the opposite direction, but after about half a dozen paces he paused. "Stay within shouting distance." He threw the instruction over his shoulder, unsure why he cared at all, and then kept walking.

…...

Clarke knew why Bellamy was being completely unbearable. In the past couple of days, she had certainly come to know him better than she could ever have predicted. So she fully and completely understood that he was feeling overwhelmed by guilt and worried about his sister.

But that didn't mean that she was happy to be left in the middle of unfamiliar territory alone. She could feel the nervousness creeping up the back of her neck, and hated herself somewhat for feeling safer when he was around. Since when had Bellamy Blake become a source of comfort rather than a source of consternation?

It was with some relief that she found this train of thought interrupted by her discovery of the door. She kicked it, hard, felt pain smart in her toe, and then decided that this was a situation where it was acceptable to admit that, maybe, a certain smirking autocrat had some uses after all.

…...

To say that Bellamy was frustrated would be an understatement. He couldn't believe that he'd left the camp for a whole day in a state of just a little hope about what they might find here, only to find literally nothing of use. But, then again, he'd been furious pretty much since they reached the ground, between the grounders and Murphy and the culling on the Ark. Come to think of it, he'd been angry for a long time before that, too, certainly since they'd locked his sister up, or maybe longer still, since he realised that them locking his sister up was even a possibility.

So that would be basically his whole life then.

Clarke said something cheerful about some blankets she'd found and he heard himself snap back at her without quite realising he was doing so. She was so infuriatingly naive. What good were a few blankets against winter on a hostile planet? And why did she have to look for the good in everything, all of the time? It was exhausting.

"Hey, it's something." Clarke was trying to defend herself, trying to pacify him, trying to make everything better as was her wont. He knew that his fury at her was illogical, that she had not chosen the grim situation in which they found themselves. But she was _there_ and the closest thing to a member of the council he was going to be able to yell at any time soon.

"How about a canteen or a med kit or a decent fricking tent?" He took a kick at a nearby drum and sent its contents spilling across the floor. He was on the verge of leaving and storming out of there when he realised what, exactly, it was that he had spilled on the floor. Guns. And not just any guns, but half decent rifles that had been protected by the grease that he'd just kicked all over the place.

"Oh my god."

"What?" Clarke looked up at him sharply, not slow to catch on to the change in the tone of his voice, and he indicated his discovery where it lay.

"This changes everything. No more running from spears." He couldn't fight the excitement in his voice, pleasantly surprised by his own change in mood and the idea that, maybe, just for once, they could get lucky on this godforsaken planet. He couldn't help but grin just a little as he looked over at her. "Ready to be a badass, Clarke?"

"Look." She was using that voice, the one that meant that she meant business, that he was in for something of an argument. "I'm not going to fight you on bringing guns back to camp. I know we need them, but don't expect me to like it." A definite frown was marring her brow, and just for a moment he allowed himself to wonder what it would be like to kiss those frown lines away.

"OK. But you need to learn how to do this." He set up a sheet as a target at the end of the room then walked back and held out a rifle towards her. She seemed more than a little unsure about this, having clearly never handled a weapon before. She took it, kept it hovering in midair, stretched out to her side as if she feared it might explode of its own volition.

"So I just hold it on my shoulder?" It sounded like the last thing in the world she had any intention of doing.

"Yeah." Taking pity on her, he took the couple of steps needed to close the gap between them and stand at her back. Slowly, giving her chance to rebuff him, he placed his hand around her wrist and guided it gently into place. With the other hand, he eased the butt of the rifle onto her shoulder. This was, he reflected, the closest they had ever been outside of those couple of undiscussed sexual encounters. And there was something strangely intimate about the situation in as much as Clarke looked unusually vulnerable as she stood there, attempting something she clearly found rather frightening.

"OK?" She asked, nervous.

"OK." He confirmed, his voice breathy even to his own ears. "Have a go." She pulled the trigger, and made a half decent shot for a beginner, only a few inches to the side of the target. She recoiled back into his chest just a little, and he found himself far more aware of her proximity than he would like to admit. Inhaling in something of a rush, he stepped back, and made for the exit. "Keep practising." He instructed her as he left, short with her again, but this time for a rather different reason. "I need some air."

…...

Clarke couldn't shake the feeling that she'd been lucky with her hallucination – yes, it was a wrench on her gut to see her father again, but aside from some raw emotions she was basically none the worse for wear. As she hurried out of the depot to check on Bellamy, she heard screams and began to fear that, maybe, the same could not be said of him. She knew she should never have let him go off alone – he had seemed shaken up and strangely vulnerable, and now he was out there, probably sky high, and screaming at something. Whether the object of his terror was real and threatening him or imaginary and tormenting him, she had no way of knowing, and she wasn't really sure which of the two would be preferable in any case.

When she arrived at the source of the sounds and saw Dax standing over a clearly still intoxicated Bellamy with a gun held aloft, she actually breathed a sigh of relief. Because Bellamy Blake did not need more demons to fight, and at least a real, living, breathing boy she could fight on his behalf.

Within seconds she was rethinking that conclusion, because she realised that Dax was strong and resolutely _not high_, and she wasn't altogether winning, even with Bellamy's somewhat intoxicated help. She had to admit that she herself had been more sober. She wasn't entirely sure how it happened, but somehow Dax ended up dead, and she seemed to be holding a gun, and Bellamy seemed to be holding a bloodied knife. She crawled over to him, removed the knife from his grasp with more gentleness than she knew she was capable of showing him, and then passed out, exhausted and not quite in touch with the world, against his shoulder.

When she came round again, what could only have been minutes later, she was confused by the sound of sobbing. She took a moment to get her bearings and then realised that, in fact, the sobbing was being produced by the young man by her side. She sat up sharply and took his bloodied hand in her own.

"You're OK." She whispered, whether to reassure him or herself she wasn't quite sure. "You're OK."

"No I'm not." He sounded utterly lost, and utterly broken, and utterly _un_like the leader of his people. "My mother..." He sobbed, twice, before continuing. "If she knew what I've done, who I am. She raised me to be better, to be good."

"Bellamy - " She wasn't sure what she intended to say, only that she needed to stop this man from descending into madness in his grief.

"And all I do is hurt people. I'm a monster."

"Hey, you saved my life today. You may be a total ass half the time, but I need you." She squeezed his hand at that, and felt the slightest pressure in return. "We all need you. None of us would've survived this place if it wasn't for you." It was the truth and he deserved to know it. She brought a hand up to his cheek and turned his face so that she could look him in the eye as she spoke the words she knew he needed to hear. "You want forgiveness, fine, I'll give it to you. You're forgiven, OK, Bellamy. And now you have to come back with me. You have to face it."

"Like you faced your mum?" There was less venom in his voice than she expected, only tiredness, and sorrow.

"You're right. I don't want to face my mom. I don't want to face any of it."

"Jaha will kill me when he comes down."

"We'll figure something out." She promised, running her thumb over his cheek where her hand still lay.

"Can we figure it out later?" He asked, reaching for her.

"Whenever you're ready." She confirmed, leaning into his touch.

…...

Bellamy wasn't sure how Clarke had talked him into this. To be honest, _talking_ hadn't had much to do with it. It was knowing she would be there, by his side, as ever, which had persuaded him to take this step and speak to Jaha.

As if she had read his mind, she reached out to take his hand the moment they were inside her tent and out of view of the rest of the camp. He wasn't quite sure how he felt about that – why did they have to maintain hostilities in public and rely on each other only in private? - but filed it away as a question for another time as Clarke fired up the video link and Jaha's face appeared on screen.

"Mr Blake, I've wanted to talk to you for some time now." The chancellor's voice was not exactly cold, but nor was it comforting, and he wasn't entirely sure how to begin.

"Before you do, I'd like to say something." He was surprised to hear Clarke's voice, but on reflection, he shouldn't have been. It may not have been their plan that she would speak first, but she'd had his back since before they were even – well, whatever they were now – and she was never one to let injustice stand unchallenged. "When you sent us down here, you sent us to die, but miraculously, most of us are still alive. In large part, that is because of him, because of Bellamy." He was moved by the passion in her words. He'd never realised she actually respected his leadership this much. "He's one of us, and he deserves to be pardoned of his crimes just like the rest of us."

"Clarke, I appreciate your point of view, but it's not that simple." Jaha was not about to be moved so easily, and he was pleased to be able to get back to the script they had planned.

"It is if you want to know who on the Ark wants you dead." He saw the sudden change of expression on Jaha's face, the glint of calculation in his eyes, and knew that Clarke had been right. It really was going to work.

"Bellamy Blake, you're pardoned for your crimes. Now, tell me who gave you the gun."

…...

That was the first night she expected him. She caught herself doing so, and wondered what it meant, that she was starting to presume that Bellamy Blake would be a feature of her day. But then she remembered that it didn't have to _mean_ anything, that they were just a couple of people having sex. No, she'd phrased that wrong. They were just a _pair_ of people having sex.

Well, she hoped they were a pair of people having sex. So far there was no sign of that tonight. The camp had been quiet for about half an hour but he wasn't here. Perhaps he'd found something else to do, she wondered. Or some_one_ else to do, a treacherous whisper in the back of her mind suggested. Whatever, she had no right to care what – or whom – he was doing. And she didn't, anyway. But, all the same, she figured she might as well go and look for him, because she had just as much right to initiate in this non-relationship as he did.

With that resolve, she strode through the door of her tent. She didn't need to sit there feeling stood up, she could get on with standing up for herself. Or, well, lying down for herself. And getting herself laid. All she needed was to project the confidence she _nearly_ felt and -

She walked into him, quite literally, about ten metres outside her tent, and felt his arms come around her to hold her steady.

"Look where you're going, Princess."

"Sorry."

"Did you just _apologise_? What's wrong with you? Sounds like you need to get laid."

"Well, if you're offering."

"I might be." He grinned at her. "Who am I kidding, I was just on my way to see you." She tried not to show relief at that, but wasn't sure she succeeded. "Sorry I'm a bit late, there was a misunderstanding about the guard schedule."

"I'm not sure how you can be late to something we hadn't arranged." He smiled at that, as if he knew something she didn't.

"You were definitely hoping I'd come over." His hand had somehow ended up on her hip, and she wasn't really sure when that had happened.

"Whatever." She traced the line above his collarbone, where his T shirt ended and his skin began, with the tips of her fingers.

"Your tent or mine?" She paused her tracing and pretended to consider the question carefully. She could feel his patience wearing thin. "Yours is closer." He said decisively, and before she knew it, he had picked her up and carried her back to her bed.

…...

She didn't understand Bellamy Blake. She certainly hadn't understood him a week ago, but really, was she any closer now?

This man had threatened Jasper. He had tortured a grounder. He had threatened _her_, only days ago, on the subject of the wristbands.

So how had she ended up here, head pillowed on his chest, while his arms wrapped around her, holding her close, and his hand drew lazy circles on her shoulder?

"You OK?" He asked, and she wondered when post-coital chitchat had become part of their arrangement.

"Not bad."

"Not bad? I'm hurt. I thought I was better than _not bad_."

"Don't be an idiot, Bellamy. In order to be hurt, you'd have to care."

"Who says I don't care?"

"The girl you're having no-strings-attached meaningless sex with? I mean, for starters, if you actually cared, I'd like to think you'd have _fondled_ my breasts rather than crushing them to death."

"Feedback duly noted. I'll do better next time."

She felt her breath catch at his implication that there would be a next time, that whatever _this_ was would endure beyond this moment, and snuggled her cheek more deeply into his chest. He squeezed her closer in response, and she allowed herself to fall asleep, utterly relaxed, in his arms.

Of course, he was gone when she woke up.

**a/n Thanks for reading!**


	3. Chapter 3

**a/n Thanks for your reviews! I'm so pleased people are enjoying this story. Happy reading!**

"Best Unity Day ever." The voice in her ear was familiar, but the warm breath fanning over her cheek made her jump all the same. If she was honest with herself, she'd been wondering where Bellamy had got to. She hadn't seen him in what felt like hours. But, then again, there was nothing new there – it wasn't like he would be seen dead looking even vaguely friendly with her in front of other people.

"Do you really think now is a good time to be having a party?" Her embarrassment made her tone sharp. "The comms are still dead, we've no idea what happened up there, not to mention the grounder is out there." She pointed viciously in the directions she was referring to in the hopes of conveying her point.

"Grounders. By now, he's made it home. He's probably putting together a lynch mob" Bellamy corrected her, but he seemed utterly calm about the situation. She had to admit that his steadiness was a welcome presence by her side at times like this. "Relax. I've got security covered." His hand reached out towards her, as if to squeeze hers in reassurance, but then he seemed to think better of it and settled for smirking at her instead. "Why don't you go get a drink? You look like you could use one."

"I could use more than one." She kept her tone light, returning his smirk with a grin of her own.

"Then have more than one. Clarke, the Exodus ship carrying your mother comes down here in two days. After that, the party's over." She privately wondered what else would be over. She rated as pretty damn low the chances of Bellamy sneaking into her tent every night with a whole Ark's worth of other women to choose from, not to mention her mother looming over them. "Have some fun while you still can. You deserve it."

"Yeah. Okay. So do you by the way." _Screw it_, she thought, and reached out to squeeze his hand. He surprised her by returning the gesture without hesitation.

"I'll have my fun when the grounders come." She had no response to that, and retracted her hand swiftly, because he sounded rather more like the Bellamy she had first met than the one she thought she was getting to know.

…...

He wasn't trying to watch her, but it seemed that it was happening all the same.

There she was, on the other side of the camp, playing some drinking game that seemed to involve flipping something into a cup, flipping her hair over her shoulder as she laughed, making his heart flip just a little as she smiled broadly at the other teenagers around the table. For an insane moment, he was gripped by the need to go over there and – what, stake a claim to her? Walk up behind her and surprise her with his arms around her waist? Kiss her full on the lips, in full view of a camp full of people whose respect he wanted to maintain?

Yes, definitely insanity. After all, she meant nothing to him. She meant _less_ than nothing to him.

But that didn't mean he couldn't smile at the ridiculous sight of her trying to balance something on her nose for the benefit of her audience. And it didn't mean he couldn't let his imagination wander to what might happen in his tent that evening, to the feel of her lips yielding beneath his kiss and her body melting beneath his hands. And it didn't mean that, actually, whether he liked it or not, he wasn't in serious danger of starting to _need_ her, just a little bit.

He drifted through the party, sharing out his charm as appropriate. After all, he needed these delinquents to continue to follow him at least until the dropship from the Ark showed up. So he flirted with those he reckoned would be susceptible to it, and acted the brother-in-arms to those who he knew would not appreciate his best smile, and surprised himself by warming up the the act and actually starting to have a good time. The grounders would come, but for now, surrounded by the warmth of an admiring crowd, all was well in the world.

He saw Clarke walking towards him and repressed a grin. If she'd loosened up as much as he had, this could be fun.

"Hey." No such luck. The signals she was sending off promised more of business than pleasure. "I need to talk to you."

"Having fun yet, Princess?" Surely whatever it was could wait. Preferably, it could wait until after this party. And maybe until after whatever they got up to after this party.

"I'm serious." He sighed heavily at that.

"You always are." OK, that was unfair. After all, it wasn't exactly true. But he wasn't looking forward to his fun being ruined for the night. "So talk."

"Finn's set up a meeting with the grounders." He stifled a stab of jealousy at the news that she'd been having meaningful conversations with Finn. After all, what she got up to with other men was none of his business. Not even what she got up to with other men she'd slept with. _Especially_ not what she got up to with other men she'd slept with. "I'm leaving to go talk to them." The panic set in at that. She couldn't march out there and put herself in danger. It was nothing to do with how he felt about her, he reasoned. No, it was because the camp needed her to continue to function. He was just looking out for his people.

"Because you think that impaling people on spears is code for "let's be friends"? Have you lost your damn mind?" He resisted the urge to reach out for her shoulders and shake some sense into her. Or reach out to pull her into a hug, hold her tight so that she couldn't go off and do anything crazy.

"I think it might be worth a shot." How was she so infuriatingly calm about this? "I mean, we do have to live with these people."

"They'll probably gut you, string you up as a warning." He shuddered as he remembered the way they had left Jasper as bait in that trap. The trap that she had fallen into.

"Well, that's why I'm here. I need you to follow us, be our backup." He started to breathe a sigh of relief at that – at least he would be there to keep an eye on her – but he was still rather uncomfortable about the way she was referring to herself and Finn as an _us_. Maybe she hadn't moved on so far after all.

"Does Finn know about this?" He had to wonder just how much she had been sharing with him.

"Finn doesn't need to know." He smirked at that, just a little, because even in the middle of a potentially perilous peacemaking expedition, his ego was strangely satisfied that she was keeping secrets from Spacewalker. "And, Bellamy, bring guns." Well _of course_ he was going to bring guns. He wasn't about to let her wander around out there undefended.

…...

As Bellamy thought back over the disaster that was their failed mission to negotiate, later that night on their return to the camp, he couldn't help feeling that he was focusing on the wrong aspects of the situation. As the leader – or, realistically, co-leader – of this camp he should be worried about the failure to make peace, about the likely increase in hostilities, about the threat to their people. But, if he were being honest, he had never really expected the negotiations to come to much anyway, so they weren't much worse off than before. He found himself strangely relaxed, gazing at the remains of the Unity Day festivities. The attack would come when it came, and they had guns, so that was something. And they had Raven's brain, which was something else entirely.

That thought took him back to the horrible moment earlier that day, when he'd been asking Raven for bullets and he'd suggested they should get Clarke and then she'd realised that she already knew exactly where Clarke was, by Finn's side. And at that moment, he wanted so badly to tell her that she didn't have anything to worry about. But there were good reasons why he couldn't do that, of course. The selfish reason was that he wanted to keep quiet about whatever on Earth it was that he and Clarke were up to. But the kinder reason was that he wasn't sure it would be the truth; whatever Clarke felt – or didn't feel – towards Finn, there was no denying that Spacewalker was still looking at her as if she'd hung the moon. He felt slightly sick himself, looking at the way Clarke fussed over his stab wound with such _care_, until he got close enough to hear them bickering, and heard his own name mentioned, and stood up just a little bit straighter.

His focus was brought abruptly back to the present by Finn's continuing fuming about the way he'd handled the situation – or, if he was being entirely honest, _failed_ to handle the situation.

"You got anything to say?" So, he sounded belligerent. _Good_. Spacewalker was an idiot.

"Yeah, I told you no guns!" The younger, shorter boy was trying and failing to get up in his face.

"I told you we couldn't trust the grounders. I was right." He was surprised to hear Clarke, normally rather more compassionate than him, laying into Finn and wading in on his side of the argument.

"Why didn't you tell me what you were up to?" The hurt in Raven's voice had he and Clarke meeting each other's eyes covertly, both feeling the awkwardness of the situation.

"I tried, but you were too busy making bullets for your gun." He couldn't let Finn continue to upset Raven like this.

"You're lucky she brought that! They came there to kill you, Finn."

"You don't know that! Jasper fired the first shot!"

"You ruined everything." This was getting out of hand now, as Octavia turned on Jasper.

"I saved you." Jasper was quick to defend himself. "You're welcome!"

"Well, if we weren't at war already, we sure as hell are now." He was so fed up of Spacewalker's self-righteous attitude. It wasn't as if his behaviour was always so perfect. He turned to Clarke, and the tone of his voice was almost whining as he addressed her. "You didn't have to trust the Grounders. You just had to trust me." That, Bellamy thought, was an interesting point. Because if there was one thing he knew about Clarke, it was that she was never going to trust Finn again.

"Like I said, best Unity Day ever." He could hear the exhaustion in his own voice. He was so done with this argument. The peace mission had failed, and now it was over. They needed to calm down and -

A great booming sound caught them all by surprise. The noise was so loud he could feel his jaw clench in response, and the object speeding towards the Earth was going shockingly quickly.

"The Exodus ship?" He wondered out loud, turning to Clarke. "Your mum's early."

"Wait. Too fast." He could hear the panic rising in her voice. "No parachute? Something's wrong." Something was certainly very wrong. She had scarcely finished speaking when they all felt the impact, no more than a couple of miles away.

Bellamy didn't know what to do. He wasn't sure what the protocol was for comforting one's no-strings-attached sexual partner when they'd just watched the ship their mother was on crash into the Earth, presumably killing everyone on board. He also wasn't sure why he _wanted_ to comfort her, as that seemed to imply an emotional level to their relationship that he was pretty sure wasn't part of the deal, and that rather added to the whole not-knowing-what-to-do thing. Anyway, he needed to make his mind up quickly, because Clarke had just collapsed, sobbing, to the ground next to him and he felt like he ought to get on with it.

Of one thing he was pretty sure – this wasn't one of those moments where sex was the answer.

And when he thought about it like that, really, it was easy. Because sex was the only thing that happened between them. So if sex wasn't the answer, then he wasn't the answer. With that decided, he clung to his resolve and walked away. After all, he wasn't there to have meaningful conversations about her feelings.

…...

He thought better of it, later that night. Comforting someone in their grief didn't have to mean anything, he figured. After all, it was just good manners. It was what his mother would have wanted him to do.

It felt beyond strange to be walking to her tent with a goal in mind other than getting in her pants. He could hear her crying from some metres away and knew that he was thoroughly out of his depth. Complicated feelings about dead mothers, he could _understand_. But _talking_ about them? Offering meaningful comfort? That was not really his thing.

"Hey." He began, voice soft, as he let himself through the opening of her tent. She jumped at that, and started brushing at her eyes, apparently embarrassed to be caught crying by her acquaintance-with-benefits. "Hey, don't worry about it. Crying when your dysfunctional mother dies is normal. I would know." It was a bad joke, at a bad time, and so he was unsurprised when she did not laugh. He was more surprised when she made no attempt to respond, because Clarke Griffin, lost for words, was not something he had ever expected to see.

"So, erm, listen. I wanted to stop by to say that this sucks. And, as I've mentioned before, deep and meaningful chats about feelings isn't really our thing and this doesn't seem like a situation that will be improved by sex so... yeah. My condolences?" He didn't think that had gone quite to plan but then again, in the face of her distress, he wasn't sure he could actually remember what the plan had been.

He didn't want to seem like he was taking advantage of her at this awful time, but offering physical comfort was literally the only thing he was any good at. He stood, uncertain, for a couple of seconds, during which her sobbing showed no sign of growing quieter and she continued to stare at the floor and tears kept raining down her face. Slowly, tentatively, he sat down beside her. Cautiously, giving her plenty of time to object, he reached an arm around her shoulders. She didn't collapse into his chest, because she was Clarke Griffin, and even in the worst of circumstances she was perfectly capable of supporting herself. But she did lean into his hug just a little, just enough to let him know that, if she could, she would have told him that it had helped.

**a/n Thanks for reading!**


	4. Chapter 4

**a/n Thanks for all your encouragement for this story so far! I'm afraid this is more of an emotional rather than physical developments kind of a chapter... Happy reading!**

Clarke had barely seen Bellamy since they had brought Murphy back into camp, and she couldn't help but wonder if there was a link there. Of course she had to be an idiot, and stand up for letting Murphy stay with them while he recovered from his torture, and now they were all going to catch this horrific fever. Maybe it was a good thing Bellamy had been avoiding her after all. At least he was avoiding any contact with this sickness.

It was almost like she had summoned him by allowing herself to think about him, she reflected. Really, it was uncanny. It was like that time the other night – was it only as recent as that? - when she had set out to look for him and found him right outside her tent. In much the same way, here he was, now, blithely walking towards her with no idea of the danger he was putting himself in.

"Bellamy, stay back." She hoped that he could hear how afraid she was. He needed to understand that she meant it.

"Did he do something to you?" She found at least a little comfort in how quickly he rushed to worry about her. She saw the moment when he realised what was wrong and started to panic. "What the hell is this?"

"Biological warfare." She set it out for him with a heavy heart. "You were waiting for the grounders to retaliate for the bridge? This is it. Murphy is the weapon." She watched as his jaw gaped open in disbelief, but then quickly hardened in anger.

"Is this your revenge, helping the grounders kill us?" She could see Murphy flinch at the fury in Bellamy's voice.

"I didn't know about this, OK, I swear." There was only one word for Murphy's response, and that word was _cowering_.

"Stop lying. When are they coming?"

"Murphy, think, all right? What can you tell us that's useful? Did you hear anything?" She could hear the desperation in her own voice.

"They are vicious, cruel." Well, that wasn't useful at all. They already knew that.

"You want to see vicious?" She could see Bellamy was on the edge of lunging towards the sick boy, and felt a flash of fear for him.

"Hey, don't." She instinctively reached out a hand towards him, but then retracted it hastily. "Whatever this thing is, it spreads through contact."

"Who else has been in contact with him, Clarke? And how many?"

"Only about a dozen. I'm going to set up a quarantine in here to contain it." She may as well start with the good news, she figured. "But... you're not going to like this, Bellamy. But Octavia has to be here, too." His face went completely blank at that, all trace of his earlier fury forgotten in his panic over his sister. "She's upstairs. I was just going to fetch her to check her over, actually, before you came in."

"Go get her then." His voice was cold, and quieter than she was used to. She seized the opportunity to flee from this man she no longer recognised as the Bellamy she had been getting to know before Murphy returned, and almost bolted up the ladder. She brought the girl back downstairs, knowing her brother would want to be able to at least _see_ her, even if he couldn't approach. As it happened, it didn't take long to check Octavia over at all. It was obvious that she was showing absolutely no symptoms of the sickness at this stage, but if there was one thing Clarke knew from her limited medical training, it was that this did not mean she was in the clear.

"Okay. We're done." She turned slightly towards Bellamy, sensing his need to be included in this conversation as well. "No visible signs of swelling or bleeding."

"So you're saying she doesn't have it?" His relief was palpable.

"I'm saying she doesn't have symptoms, but that could change." She tried to keep her explanation patient and gentle, but frankly her fuse was running short. There were plenty of other children, sicker than Octavia, who needed her help. Just because she was sleeping with him didn't mean his sister got special treatment. "We need to keep her here just in case."

"No way." Bellamy was quick to jump to anger, and she knew that it was only because he was frightened, but really, she could have done without his short-sighted reaction. "Look at this place. She'll get sick just being here." She bristled at that, because actually, she was doing the best she could, and it wasn't like she had the facilities to set up a perfect hospital even if she wanted to. She was doing a fine job, under the circumstances, and she didn't need this selfish monster who had replaced _her_ Bellamy being so rude all the time. She rather wondered what had happened to the man who had held her until she cried herself out on the night that her mother had died.

"Do you want to stop the spread, or not?" She was aware that she was snapping at him and relented slightly. "Look. I'll keep her on the third level with the people who aren't symptomatic yet. Think of it as a way to stop her from sneaking out again." She tried to inject a little understanding into her voice and was at least slightly successful. At length, he nodded, silently, and marched out of the dropship.

…...

"You got enough food in there, water?" She was strangely touched by his show of concern, after his perfect show of unconcern earlier, and couldn't help going slightly weak at the knees in response.

Hang on, since when has she been one to go weak at the knees over a man being thoughtful? She must have got sicker than she thought.

"Yeah." She gathered her wits to respond. "Some medicine might be nice."

"I'll see what I can do." He cracked a small smile and she felt herself warming up to the familiar tone of their back-and-forth – until his abrupt change of topic left her blood running cold in panic. "Octavia, you OK?" Of course, he got no response, because she had long since sent Octavia to ask Lincoln how to cure this illness. He started striding towards her and she felt herself wobble slightly as she cast about for a suitable response.

"Bellamy, wait. She's not here. I sent her to see Lincoln. Look, if there's a cure, he has it. I didn't tell you because I knew you wouldn't let her go." She could only hope that he would recognise her words as the truth and forgive her because, really, they didn't have another solution. Based on the look on his face, it seemed that was not the way things were going to turn out. He met her eyes, and his gaze held nothing of the warmth that had started to develop between them.

"If anything happens to her, you and me are going to have problems." As far as she could see, they already _did_ have problems. Through the haze of fever starting to settle over her mind, one frivolous thought stood out – even if they both survived this epidemic, she was going to have to find a new bedmate. He was looking at her like he wanted to squish her beneath his shoe, not take her to his tent.

"Bellamy!" She sounded forlorn, and desperate, and pathetic, and everything she had hoped never to be as she called out to a man, but right now she seemed powerless to do anything about it. "Bellamy!" He was walking away from her, and somehow she knew, that if he left now, he wouldn't quite come back to her, not really. He brushed aside one of the teenagers, then stepped back sharply when he realised the boy was sick and turned to stalk back towards her and spit more hurtful words at her.

"Not to state the obvious, Princess, but your quarantine isn't working." She knew she was supposed to come up with some sharp, challenging reply, so that he could argue back – that was how their relationship worked, right? - but the world was growing dark around her and the ground seemed to be moving up to meet her with alarming speed.

The last thing she remembered was a pair of warm, solid arms closing around her and stopping her fall.

…...

He'd screwed up again, he knew it, and this time he'd screwed up with the one person who had totally forgiven him the last time around, the one person who totally understood him, the one person with whom he was, totally, himself.

He thought he'd hated himself after that awful conversation in the dropship, when he'd found out that this terrifying illness was spreading through the camp and his sister was in quarantine. Because, yeah, sure, he'd been worried about Octavia, but that was no reason to act like a total arse towards Clarke who was only trying her best. She was doing what she had to do, and he understood, really he did, that she couldn't make any exceptions, not even for his sister. So, when he'd had a little time to reflect on his reaction, he'd decided he would do better the next time. He'd try to show her that he was grateful for her efforts, that he was confident that she was doing the right thing. Of course, his normal way of communicating with her was off limits, but he'd told himself he could at least check that they had the supplies they needed and see if there was any way to help. But then he'd had to go and ruin it by losing his temper about his sister, _again_, when actually Clarke was infuriatingly _right_ about the fact that Lincoln was their best bet for a cure.

Of course, the worst thing was that he hadn't even realised she was sick. He couldn't believe he'd been so totally unobservant as to not notice she was ill at all, let alone that she was on the point of collapsing. He didn't deserve her forgiveness. He didn't deserve her.

He caught that thought a moment too late, because _deserving her_ wasn't part of the equation at all. He should be thinking like a leader – his priority should be looking after the health of as many people as possible, and of course, the most effective way to do that was to ensure that their healer was in the best possible shape.

Any suggestion that Clarke meant anything more to him than her role as their doctor needed to be quashed. Immediately.

…...

This was the first time in some days that she had been surprised to find herself in Bellamy's arms. After all, that had become something of a common occurrence, of late, up until Murphy's return. But she was surprised that he seemed to have forgiven her so completely and so quickly as to have caught her as she fell, in front of the entire camp, when they had been in the middle of an argument.

"Hey, let me go." She insisted, not wanting him to feel obliged to stay in a situation he must be finding uncomfortable to say the least and that could well lead to him getting ill. "I'm OK."

"No, you're not."

"Octavia will come back with a cure." She had to believe it, and she needed him to believe it too.

"There is no cure." She was caught by surprise by the sound of Octavia's voice, and wondered if perhaps she was more delirious with fever than she had realised. "But the grounders don't use the sickness to kill. They use it to soften the battlefield. They're attacking at first light. Come on, Bell. I'll help you get Clarke settled in the dropship." No, she thought, she wasn't delirious. She had understood everything that Octavia just said only too well.

"What do I have to do to stop you from going in there?" She whispered to him, urgently, aware that he was about to carry her into a room full of sickness and desperate to avoid him falling sick.

"Get better." He spoke with more gentleness in his voice than she had expected, and continued to walk up the ramp. The world blurred before her eyes again for a few moments, and when she next resurfaced she seemed to be in the bed she remembered Murphy occupying only recently.

"They need to stay hydrated." It was important that Bellamy and Octavia understood this, that someone else could look after her patients while she was incapacitated.

"You need to stay hydrated." Bellamy brushed a wisp of hair out of her face and lifted a cup of water to her lips.

"OK. Them too, please?"

"It's OK, I'll do it. Just rest." Octavia took another cup and started making a round of the room in one direction, while Murphy surprised her by taking the other.

"You need to save yourselves." She insisted to Bellamy, trying to convey the urgency she felt. "Just leave camp. Take anyone healthy enough with you."

"If you think that's even a possibility, you don't know me very well."

She wanted to argue back, she needed him to take their people to safety, but the fuzziness was stealing her brain again, and all she could process was the reassuring weight of his hand in her own.

…...

Bellamy was next to her when she next woke up, but under rather different circumstances. In the delirium of his fever he was lashing out at Murphy as he held out a cup of water towards him. Come to think of it, she was pretty sure he'd have been tempted to do that even without the fever.

"Bellamy, you're sick, OK?" Murphy's conciliatory tone was something of a surprise, and Clarke wasn't convinced that this new attitude suited him. "I'm just trying to help. Here."

"When I get better, if you're still here-"

"Hey, I got this one." She pulled herself laboriously into a sitting position and took the cup, shooing Murphy away. "Here." She smoothed the curls away from Bellamy's forehead as he drank, in an uncanny echo of how he'd cared for her so recently, and he smiled up at her, evidently remembering the same thing.

"You feeling better?" He asked, with a slightly raspy quality to his voice.

"Yeah." She whispered back to him.

"That's good." Just for a moment, at the look in his eyes, she allowed herself the luxury of mistaking him for someone who cared.

Being Bellamy, he was keen to get up and on with looking like a leader as quickly as possible. At least, she figured, this gave her a legitimate reason to spend the rest of the day glued to his side, checking up on him. She understood his pressing need to get outside and look busy, especially in light of the plan to blow up the bridge, which he had explained to her with some urgency. They needed to know whether it had worked, or whether there were thousands of grounders descending on them at this very moment. As dawn began to streak the sky, they felt the ground rattle and saw the mushroom cloud rise.

"They did it." Bellamy sounded faintly disbelieving, and she felt him physically sag against her with relief.

"I am become death, destroyer of worlds." For some reason, even though she knew this was only a bridge, this show of military might made her want to mourn, not jump for joy. "It's Oppenheimer, the man who built the first -"

"I know who Oppenheimer is." He cut her off, tone somewhat sharp.

"Of course you do." She should have realised he would. "I need to stop underestimating you."

**a/n Thanks for reading!**


	5. Chapter 5

**a/n Thanks to everyone who has been so awesome at reviewing! I'm enjoying writing this a little too much. Happy reading!**

Clarke was up later than she'd have liked that evening, sterilising rags with half an eye on the last few patients of the fever, and thinking she probably ought to regret showing them so little attention because she'd spent most of the day following Bellamy around and checking he was recovering. She tried to convince herself that it was entirely sensible to make the wellbeing of the group leader a priority, but she wasn't altogether successful.

She flinched a little when she heard footsteps behind her. "Come to bed, Clarke." The voice was undoubtedly Bellamy's, but it took her by surprise to hear quite so much concern in his tone.

"Just let me finish this." She muttered, indicating the bucket in front of her.

He didn't reply to that, and she was on the point of looking round to see what had distracted him when she felt his arms wrap around her waist from behind.

"How long are you going to be?" He murmured into her ear as he started brushing the underside of her breast through her shirt with his thumb.

"Quite a while if you're going to distract me." She told him firmly, refusing to allow herself to melt into him through sheer exhaustion as she wanted to. He was only here for sex, she reminded herself, not for cuddles and comfort. She shouldn't be letting the warmth of his embrace get to her.

"You know, you're cute when you're flustered." It seemed he was in a teasing mood.

"Stop it, Bellamy. What if one of the kids wakes up?" She gestured in the direction of the three patients asleep on the other side of the dropship.

He began pressing kisses into the sensitive skin in the crook of her neck while he considered his reply. "Well, then one of the kids will be very jealous."

"You're infuriating, you know that?"

"And yet you're still sleeping with me."

She didn't dignify that with a response, but continued wringing out rags. He tolerated this for about ninety seconds before seemingly running out of patience, and maneuvering into the gap between her and the bucket, rendering all hope of completing her chore thoroughly _obstructed_ by his firm chest.

"Did you want something?" She asked, tone brimming with false innocence.

His heated kiss was all the response she was going to get to that question, it seemed, as his lips crashed against hers a little too quickly to be entirely pleasant. It wasn't news to her that he wasn't particularly patient when it came to getting what he wanted, but this was the first time he'd ever seemed quite so _desperate_ to be kissing her. She wondered, as he broke off just long enough to drag her by the hand towards the privacy of his tent, if perhaps the combination of life-threatening illness and averted grounder attack and spending most of the day in her company had heightened the tension somewhat. She had to admit that, if she was being honest, she felt at least a little desperate for his touch herself.

He surprised her when they arrived at his tent, and got the door closed, and her shirt found itself thrown into a distant corner. She was expecting him to pursue the theme of _getting the hell on with it_, to continue with those slightly-too-intense-to-be-pleasurable kisses. But instead he drew back for a long moment, and _looked_ at her, in a way that made her toes curl into the rug on the floor and made her face heat with self-consciousness.

"What?" She asked, arms instinctively coming up to cross over her chest.

"Just you." He said softly, as if that was a thing that was acceptable to say in the context of a no-strings-attached screw.

There was, she decided, only one way to overcome her impulse to ask him what that even meant. She buried one hand in his hair, and used the other to pull his hips against hers, and got the hell on with _getting the hell on with it._

…...

Bellamy had spent the whole day feeling distinctly grumpy, and much as he hated to admit it to himself he knew it was because Clarke had been gone by the time he woke up that morning. He'd thought, between the slightly less _businesslike_ dynamic to their activities the previous night, and the fact that she'd curled up only too willingly against his chest as they dozed off that, perhaps, that they might be on the point of agreeing to care about each other at least a little. But, clearly, she continued to view him as nothing more than a meaningless distraction. As the sun began to fall he admitted defeat and went looking for her, but only because they needed to talk about Murphy. The fact he was in danger of missing her obviously did not influence his decision, not in the slightest.

When he found her just beyond the edge of the camp he could practically see the gears whirring in her head as she stood gazing at the graves of the children they'd lost to the virus. He was pretty sure he knew exactly what she was thinking, probably taking it as a personal failure that she hadn't been able to save them all. She didn't stop to consider that it was thanks to her that so many of them were still healthy.

"You're outside of the wall without a gun." He might not be able to tell her everything he was thinking, but he could still show concern for her wellbeing.

"Fourteen graves." Her eyes had a slightly glassy quality to them, but they hadn't time to sit around mourning. They had a camp to run.

"We need to talk about Murphy." He hated himself for bringing up this difficult topic when she was already upset, but it needed to be done.

"He was right about the bridge." There she went again, being Clarke, getting fired up for an argument whether he wanted one or not.

"We'll see. Octavia says the mountain men are pissed, whatever that means."

"I'd say it means we need as many soldiers as we can get."

"So, what, we have pardon power now?" He could hear the tone of challenge in his voice, and had to remind himself that this what not what he came out here for.

"It's hard running things." She sounded exhausted.

"Yes. Yes it is. On that note, I came out here to tell you I've put myself on guard duty for the night shift tonight. I'm about to head over there now. It seemed a good idea while everyone's on edge about the grounders. Leading by example and all."

"Good thought. It's nice to know you respect me enough to tell me, I suppose, but it's really not necessary to run the guard schedules past me. I know we've never formalised our individual roles in running this place, do you think we should?"

"Clarke. Much as I do respect you, that wasn't why I was telling you."

"Huh?"

"I wasn't telling you as the woman I run this camp with. I was telling you as the woman I sleep with. I thought it'd be polite to let you know I'll be on the wall tonight, not in either your tent or mine." She looked utterly bewildered at that thought.

"Oh." Clearly, he would have to remember that this was an effective strategy for rendering Clarke Griffin lost for words.

"Well, I'll be going then. Try not to miss me too much." He flashed a smirk and went to his post.

…...

There was something unsettling about these too calm days as they sat around waiting for the grounders to attack, Clarke thought. The whole camp was tense, with kids struggling to sleep, and getting into silly rows over nothing, and the volatile atmosphere had her feeling on edge too.

Obviously, the fact that she'd barely seen Bellamy in two days had nothing to do with it.

If anything, it wasn't the _not_ seeing him that bothered her. It was more the fact that on the few occasions she _did_ see him, he seemed to have reverted to being an absolute arse. He seemed to think that it was her personal fault that the camp wasn't ready to defend against an attack yet, that a couple of the delinquents were still slowly recovering from the illness, that she'd had to stitch up a nasty cut one of the girls had given another in a pointless fight over a boy, of all things. And it didn't exactly help that he'd put himself on the night watch again last night, so their normal way of relieving stress hadn't been on the table.

"Anything?" She was taken by surprise by his voice in her ear, and prepared herself for the likelihood that he was here to criticise her _again_, for not being able to read the enemy's mind and work out exactly when they were attacking, or something equally absurd.

"It's been two days. Maybe the bomb at the bridge scared them off for good." She could live in hope.

"You believe that?" Well, it seemed he was determined to make her mood even worse.

"No." She admitted. "They're coming."

"Jasper thinks he can cook up some more gunpowder if he gets some sulphur, and Raven says she can turn that into landmines. So be careful where you step." She felt him jostle her gently with his shoulder and tried to resist the temptation to melt into him.

"Ha! Funny."

"What I really need is a thousand more of her tin can bombs I can roll into their village and blow those Grounders to hell. That's what they want to do to us." She didn't like it when he got all militaristic like this. She sort of understood that violence seemed to be a thing they were going to have to do, but it distressed her that this man who had the potential to be so caring and so _gentle_ seemed to enjoy war.

"I can't believe we survived a hundred years just so we could slaughter each other. There has to be another way."

"Have you got a better idea, Princess?" She wondered why he had to be so confrontational, all of the time. At times like this it became incredibly _wearing_.

"Why does it always have to be me who has a better idea? Are you so incapable of thinking for yourself?" She didn't mean to snap at him, but it seemed to have happened regardless.

"Well, as it happens, I did think of something. Excuse us, Monroe – if anyone's looking for us, I'll be explaining my new idea to Clarke." He seemed to have seized her hand and started dragging her back towards the gate. "In my tent."

"What do you think you're doing?" She thought her indignation was perfectly justified.

"Rescuing you." Why was he smirking? There was surely no need to smirk about this.

"Rescuing me? I am not some damsel in distress, Bellamy." She practically spat the words at him. "And what, exactly, do you imagine you are rescuing me from?" They were inside the walls now, and Bellamy had dropped her hand at the first sign of other people, so she wasn't entirely sure why she was still following him.

"Yourself." The smirk had progressed into a fully-fledged grin. "You need distracting." There was something that could have been rather intimate about the way he was whispering into her ear, but she knew it was actually because he didn't want anyone to overhear. Heaven forbid that anyone should learn that he was only sleeping with one girl at a time, these days, she thought with some bitterness. And it would be worse still, should anyone learn that the one girl was _her_, of all people, she mused as they entered his tent.

"And is it my fault that you put yourself on the night shift yesterday?" She thought she should probably have been trying to sound _flirtatious_, but she knew she only really sounded exasperated. Based on the way his hand was already running down her back, it seemed he thought he could help her with that.

"Well, here I am." He started trailing kisses down the sensitive skin behind her ear. "Making up for it."

She wanted to make some witty response, continue with their safe and familiar usual back-and-forth, but she wasn't quite sure that was what the moment called for. No, all things considered, this seemed like more of a _melting into his arms_ kind of moment, she thought, as his lips made it as far as her collarbone. More of a moment for relieving him of his shirt and scattering kisses over his firmly muscled chest, for pressing her hips against him so closely she could no longer tell where he ended and she began.

More of a moment, in fact, for being thoroughly distracted.

…...

He realised as he awoke that he must therefore have been asleep, and groaned internally at the thought. Bellamy Blake did not pass out from exhaustion after sex. He was a very virile young man, thank you very much. If this got round the camp he'd never live it down.

Then again, he didn't think it would get round the camp any time soon. He didn't think that was Clarke's style.

He realised that he had been woken up by her stifling giggles against his chest and wondered for a panicked moment if she was laughing at him for falling asleep. Twisting a fistful of her hair absently around his hand, he went about finding out what he'd missed.

"What's so funny, Princess?" He tried to keep his tone light and gloss over the mortification he was feeling.

"Explaining your new idea to me? In your tent? Who's going to believe that?" He breathed a sigh of relief at the realisation that she either hadn't noticed his nap, or rather more plausibly, she was too decent a person to take the piss out of him for it.

"Apparently everyone. No one batted an eyelid." It was true – these kids really did seem to be completely oblivious.

"It's almost like they think it's completely unbelievable that we could be screwing."

"To be fair, Princess, I find it pretty unbelievable that we're screwing."

That was apparently the wrong thing to say, and, if he was being honest with himself, he could rather see why. She immediately set about gathering her clothes – some of which seemed to have been thrown a surprisingly long way from the bed – and readying herself to leave.

"Hey, I didn't mean it like that." He tried to meet her eye, but she made a point of being completely absorbed by the task of disentangling her bra from his shirt.

"It doesn't matter. I need to go, I've got things to do."

"You could stay for a bit?" He hated the clinginess that was seeping into his voice, the way he sounded rather unlike himself – or rather unlike the image of himself he tried to display to the kids. He didn't think he'd ever asked her to stay before, but he hadn't liked it when she'd sneaked out while he slept the other night, and he didn't like the way she was on the point of charging out of there now looking all grumpy and _offended_ by his recent poorly chosen words. "I'm sure whatever it is can wait a couple more minutes." She at least relented far enough at that to meet his eyes, clearly somewhat surprised by his request.

"You did mean it like that. But that's OK, I know what we're doing here." He couldn't help feeling that the thing in her voice was _resignation_. "Either way, I need to go."

"I guess I should go see how Raven's getting on with those mines." He made it, reluctantly, to a sitting position, and started compiling such of his clothing as was within arm's reach.

"I'll stop by Raven's on my way to med bay. You should rest, you're exhausted." She offered half a smile with her words, as well as a firm enough stare to make him realise she meant business, and he found himself feeling rather cared for. At the risk of being _sappy_, he thought, there seemed to be something of a _warm glow_ stealing over him, and he thought he knew what that meant, and that made him feel even worse for his ill-chosen words. Because it seemed to mean that, to him, it would be rather unbelievable – not to say unacceptable - were he _not_ screwing Clarke Griffin.

**a/n Thanks for reading!**


	6. Chapter 6

**a/n Thank you so much for your reviews and follows and favourites and generally being awesome readers. Please enjoy this chapter which involves Some Substantial Developments!**

It was none of his business, Bellamy reminded himself firmly.

It was none of his business if she wanted to go hunting with Finn. It was none of his business if she wanted to have sex with Finn. It was none of his business if she wanted to stay out overnight with Finn, having some kind of manic sexathon in a cave or whatever.

None of these things were any of his business.

But Spacewalker was a bit of an idiot, really, and he couldn't help feeling that he might have got Clarke involved in something idiotic. Because he couldn't honestly imagine that it would have been _her_ idea to stay out overnight. And so he was at least a little worried about her, because it was well after dark now and they were still out there, somewhere, and this all seemed a bit foolish. And really quite excessive for what had started out as a hunting trip.

How was it possible that he knew what her lips felt like pressed into the crook of his neck but he had no idea she was still sneaking off with Spacewalker?

He had resolved to take the night watch again, because that had turned out to be quite an effective way of boosting morale around camp and keeping the good opinion of the kids. The fact that it would put him in a position to keep an eye on whether Clarke got back late was irrelevant, of course, because where Clarke was, and who she was with, and what she was doing, was none of his business. And there was a little voice in the back of his head that was relieved to do the late shift because it meant he wouldn't have to lie awake in an empty bed missing the person he had grown used to sharing it with, but mostly that voice was masked by a pretty loud internal growl of jealousy and hurt pride.

As the night drew on, and he sat at his post with no sign whatsoever of his missing friend – or was she his missing lover? - well, his missing whatever she was – fear began to get the upper hand over hurt. Anything could have happened to her out there. Wild animals, or wild grounders, or both. By the time he fell into his bed, only the fact he was utterly exhausted was enough to quiet his worries and send him to sleep.

…...

When he woke up late that morning, having caught something of a nap between the end of his watch and getting on with running the camp, he allowed himself a brief moment of hoping that Clarke and Finn had got back by now and she just hadn't seen fit to wake him up to tell him. He was a little hurt by that, he decided, because obviously he would want to know that she was OK after whatever misadventure they'd had, but it was a lot better than the alternative – that they were still out there.

This happy theory was quickly destroyed by Raven entering his tent unannounced.

"They don't waste time. I'll give them that. What's it been, a day and a half? And they're still out there, shagging each other silly I suppose." He didn't need to ask who she was talking about, given he, too, seemed incapable of thinking about anything else, so he asked what seemed a more useful question.

"What are you doing in here?" No sooner had the words left his lips than she pulled her shirt over her head. This was, all things considered, not an uncommon occurrence in his tent, but it took him by surprise on this occasion.

"Taking off my clothes." He was out of the habit of women who were not Clarke taking their clothes off in his tent. Maybe it was time for him get back in the game, if Clarke was out there getting some action with Finn. Raven clearly thought that _was_ what was happening, and Raven was a pretty intelligent woman, so she was probably right, he thought.

"Why?" He half growled, knowing the answer to the question but attempting to make it clear that she was a less-than-welcome messenger.

"I think you know what it means when a woman takes off her clothes in your tent. What do you say, Blake? Are you available to help a girl in need move on with a bit of casual sex?" He was, he thought, perfectly happy to do so. Just not _this_ girl. That revelation surprised him somewhat, because really he was rather angry with Clarke and rather jealous of Finn and he wouldn't have put it past himself to take Raven up on her offer out of sheer spite. But when she'd used exactly those words it had taken him right back to another occasion, with another woman, not so long ago, and he'd found himself missing her so much it hurt. It seemed that any efforts to pretend to himself that Clarke didn't mean anything to him were fast becoming untenable.

"No, Raven. It's nothing personal. I just... I'm not really doing casual sex at the moment." He should perhaps have offered some excuse instead of the truth. He could have said that he was late to meet with Miller about the guard schedule, or that he needed to help O in the med bay, but having shocked himself with the extent to which his every feeling rebelled against the idea of sleeping with another woman, he seemed powerless to stop the truth spilling over into his words.

It took him a moment to realise what his words to Raven meant; what he was doing with Clarke must, in fact, be _deliberate_ sex.

…...

He managed to usher a slightly embarrassed Raven out of his tent and then dress himself, but it seemed that was destined to be the limit of his achievements for the day. He stomped around the camp in such a grim mood that he might as well have stayed in bed, as he certainly wasn't actually helping anyone with anything. Between the impending threat of the grounder attack and his combination of worry and anger over Clarke and Finn, he wasn't exactly holding it together as well as he might have liked.

A gunshot from one of the guards broke through his scrambled thoughts.

"Hey! What the hell is the matter with you?" He was distantly aware that he was probably disproportionately angry about this, but in the absence of a convenient way to exorcise all his other frustrations, it seemed that this kid was going to get a bit of a tough time from him.

"I'm sorry, man. I fell asleep. I've been on watch all day."

"Everyone has been on watch all day! That bullet was one less dead grounder."

"Bell, you're scaring people." His sister was approaching him slowly, speaking quietly, as if trying to calm a distressed animal, he thought.

"They should be scared! The bomb on the bridge bought us some time to prepare, but that time is up! The grounders are out there right now, waiting for us to leave and picking us off one by one when we do! Clarke and Finn are gone, possibly dead," his voice broke a little at that, but he didn't think anyone would be interested in braving his wrath far enough to point it out to him, "and if you want to be next, I can't stop you, but no guns are leaving this camp! This camp is the only thing keeping us alive! Get back to work!" He'd expected to feel better after a rant, but somehow, taking in the terrified faces of the teenagers around him, he felt only a thousand times worse.

He was distracted from listening to himself fall apart at the seams by the realisation that some noise was issuing from the radio in his pocket.

"OK. OK, it's cool." That sounded like Jasper.

"No, it's not. You know what will happen to me if you tell Bellamy." That was Murphy. This sounded bad.

"Tell Bellamy what?" He took his radio from his pocket to ask. There was silence for a moment, then -

"Murphy has a gun. He killed Myles." Jasper babbled and was cut off abruptly. This, thought Bellamy, was on the one hand something he really didn't need today. On the other hand, maybe it would give him something to focus on that was here and now, something he might actually be able to help with.

"Murphy, what the hell are you doing?" By way of response to his question, Bellamy saw the dropship door close. OK, so it seemed that what Murphy was doing was killing people and cultivating a hostage situation. This was not good.

"You try to be a hero, Jasper dies." Sure enough, Murphy confirmed that his hunch had been correct.

"Murphy, all our ammo and food is in the middle level. You know that. You're leaving us vulnerable to an attack. I can't let that happen." He'd never had much luck reasoning with this particular boy before, but he figured it was worth a try.

"Yeah, well in case you haven't noticed, you're not exactly in control right now." Well, then. It looked like he knew what he would have to do.

"Come on, Murphy. You don't want to hurt Jasper. You want to hurt me. So what do you say? How about you trade him for me?"

"No!" That was his sister, fear sharp in her voice.

"All you have to do is let him go, and I'll take his place." He addressed Murphy.

"How?" Good, he was considering the idea.

"Bellamy, if you do this, he'll kill you." Octavia's hand was wrapped around his arm, begging him not to do this.

"If I don't, he'll kill Jasper." He pressed the call button on the radio to speak to Murphy again. "Simple, you open the door, I walk in, he walks out." Thank goodness, he was going for this and the door was opening again.

"Just you, Bellamy, unarmed. Ten seconds or I'll put on in Jasper's leg. One..."

"Raven can probably find a way to get you out." Octavia was suggesting now, and he found himself agreeing with her.

"I'll try to buy her some time. Get everyone else back to work, the grounders are still out there. And send someone to go look for Clarke." It was funny, he thought, how a bit of impending doom made him realise he should have sent out a search party last night when they weren't home as expected. Almost like the probable end of his life was making him think about what mattered.

"Four... five..." That was Murphy, warning him to get on with this.

"I'm here." Bellamy walked up the ramp of the dropship towards his fate.

…...

Clarke was fed up of being on edge. Between her failed attempt to save Tris, and the grounders' failed attempt to kill Finn in retribution, and Lincoln's thankfully successful attempt to draw away the reapers, she reckoned she'd faced quite enough crises for one hunting trip. It was, she couldn't help but notice, quite the longest hunting trip of her life – both in terms of the hours they'd actually spent away from camp and the years it felt like they'd spent away from camp. She couldn't help but wonder what might be going on in their absence. Had people noticed they were missing? Surely someone had. Did Raven think this was some kind of assignation? Did _Bellamy_ think it was some kind of assignation? Surely he realised that she'd have let him know if she'd been planning to be away overnight. After all, it seemed that was what they did now. So surely he'd have worked out something had gone wrong? So why had they seen no sign of a search party?

She was brought back to the present moment by the sound of Finn splashing water over himself in a desperate attempt to wash away the evidence of his recent kill.

"Hey." She interrupted him. "He would have killed us. You did what you had to do. We all have."

"I should have fought for you." It seemed they were verging into territory she didn't want to enter.

"Finn, don't"

"Clarke. I love you. I'm-"

She was mercifully saved from having to reply when a gunshot echoed through the air, at some distance. At approximately, she thought, the distance left to cover to the camp. Without waiting to see whether Finn was following her, she ran towards the sound. She should have known something terrible was going on in their absence, she thought. Perhaps the grounders' scouts had already arrived. She should have known there must be something urgent afoot for there to be no sign of any search parties sent out to look for them. Bellamy wouldn't leave her in danger without good reason.

She stopped at the sight of Stirling running through the trees as if the whole grounder army was on his tail, and felt Finn skid to a halt beside her.

"Clarke!" The younger boy greeted her. "Thank goodness. Murphy's gone rogue. He's got Bellamy!"

She didn't hang around to hear any more. She picked up her feet, and ran even faster. Within minutes she could hear the commotion coming from the camp, an odd assortment of screaming and wailing and shouting and the occasional gunshot. Praying she wasn't too late, she skidded through the front gate just as she saw the door of the dropship open and Miller Munroe charge in brandishing rifles, Octavia hot on their heels. She made haste to follow them, and while Miller and Munroe backed Murphy into a corner she ran to where Bellamy was hanging, purple in the face, and prayed she wasn't too late.

Not quite sure what else to do, she grabbed him by the legs to take the weight off his neck while Octavia made short work of the rope of seatbelts from which he was suspended. She felt his weight fall into her arms, and she staggered backwards, sending both of them sprawling over the floor of the dropship. Quickly, she righted herself and loosened the remaining seatbelts from around his neck.

"Bellamy?" She asked in panic, bending low over his face to check whether she could feel any airflow. "Breathe, Bellamy. Can you breathe?" By way of answer, he gave a rather choked cough.

"Bell!" His sister crouched next to them, grabbing his hand. "Come on, Bell. Breathe."

"You're OK." Clarke sighed in relief, as his chest started to move slightly more regularly. "You're OK." The purple colour in his face still worried her somewhat, as did the bruising around his throat, but it seemed he was going to survive this one.

Jasper was on the scene now, shouting to the rest of the camp that he was fine, and she supposed she had better get out of his face and leave him some room to breathe but she wasn't entirely sure about being so far away from him. After all, the last time she had left his side for any substantial period of time he had managed to get himself hanged. Reluctantly, she rocked back on her heels and let his sister pull him into an enthusiastic hug.

He pushed Octavia away roughly and jumped to his feet, rather sooner than she thought someone really should so soon after being hanged, and started advancing towards the corner where Murphy had disappeared up the ladder, shouting his name. She winced at the brittle tone of his voice, clear evidence of the damage those seatbelts had done to his neck.

"Murphy! It's over, Murphy! There's only one way out of this for you now!" He yelled.

"You want to bet?" She heard the younger boy's voice, and then an explosion, and then he was gone.

…...

Bellamy had never been so relieved to hear Clarke's voice. If he wasn't careful, he thought, he was going to start believing she could solve every problem, could save him from anything. She was certainly proving to be rather good at saving him from the worst of himself.

He knew that, if he survived whatever revenge the grounders had planned for them, he would have nightmares for months in which the chilling voice of John Murphy would tell him things like _you're a coward_ and _the princess is dead _and _I want you to die_. But he knew, too, that there was no way the spectre of those words could compete with the warm body of Clarke sleeping at his side. Clearly he would just have to put a bit more effort into asking her to stay the night in future.

In the mean time, though, they had a war to win, and rather less gunpowder than he'd have liked thanks to Murphy. Clarke had passed on Lincoln's message straight away, and although he was grateful for the warning, it seemed he was destined to fundamentally disagree with her suggested course of action. He didn't understand how she could be so right about so many things and so thoroughly wrong about what they should do now.

"This is our home now!" He yelled, whether to the kids or at her he wasn't quite sure. "We built this from nothing with our bare hands. Our dead are buried behind that wall in this ground, our ground! The grounders think they can take that away. They think that because we came from the sky, we don't belong here. But they're yet to realize one very important fact: We are on the ground now, and that means we are grounders!"

The crowd around him made rather violent agreeing noises and he forced himself not to physically sag in relief. It seemed it would be OK. They would stay here and fight. He had won them over, this time.

But then, of course, exasperating Clarke had to go and open her mouth and ruin everything, and scare the kids into following her to goodness only knew where, and glare at him with such ice in her gaze that he found himself rather wanting to kick her in the stomach.

Or perhaps kiss her. Maybe that would do just as well.

He forced that thought to the back of his mind and decided he'd better get on with putting things right. "Clarke, leaving here is a mistake."

"The decision's been made." She wasn't looking at him like she was supposed to, damn it. There was nothing of sympathy nor cooperation in her gaze. She was looking at him like he was in the way, and she had somewhere else to be.

"Crowds make bad decisions. Just ask Murphy. Leaders do what they think is right."

"I am." With that, she brushed past him, and started yelling orders at a bunch of kids holding bags, making it perfectly clear that he was, in fact, perfectly useless in the running of this camp.

As rejections went, he thought, this one certainly hit home. It felt like a rejection on quite a number of levels, encompassing as it did both his people not requiring his leadership and his – well, his whatever she was – not requiring his company. Or his help. Or anything from him at all, really, even though he'd gone and been a fool and started thinking that whatever was going on between them wasn't entirely accidental. _Whatever_, he decided. He didn't need anything from her either. She was a stuck up princess, and she was wrong about running from the grounders and, now he came to think about it, he was convinced she wasn't that great in bed after all.

…...

Clarke knew that Bellamy was less than pleased with her, but she figured there would be plenty of time to deal with that later. Plenty of time for forgiveness and meaningful conversations and make up sex, when they were no longer on the verge of being destroyed by grounders. Plenty of time, too, for analysing quite what she felt about him being hanged and barely surviving, and what that awkward stuttering of her heart might mean.

She was shocked and more than a little scared to realise that he disagreed with her far enough to have made no attempt to pack. As the kids were beginning to crowd around the gates, ready to leave, she found him sitting resolutely in the middle of the camp.

"It's time to go." She told him briskly. There would be time for all the other things later, she reminded herself. All the time in the world.

"If they follow." He made a sound that sounded rather like a snort. "It's a hundred and twenty mile walk to the ocean."

"We're wasting time." Finn appeared at her shoulder, employing his remarkable talent for showing up where he wasn't wanted. "If he wants to stay, he can stay."

"No. No he can't." She insisted, feeling panic rising at that idea, because if he stayed – well, they wouldn't have very much time at all, then. "We can't do this without you, Bellamy."

"What do you want me to say, Clarke?" He asked, eyes fixed on the toes of his boots.

"I want you to say you're with us. Those kids out there, they listen to you." It wasn't even half of what she wanted him to say, but she supposed it would serve as a starting point.

"They're lining up to go. They listen to you more." He muttered.

"I gave them an easy choice. But five minutes ago, they were willing to fight and die for you. You inspire them. I'm afraid we're going to need that again before this day is through." He didn't reply, even as she realised she had, in fact, started begging, and she found herself sinking to her knees beside him. Was he really going to stay, going to force her to do this alone? "Please, Bellamy. _I_ can't do this without you."

"You can't?" He looked up at last, and met her eyes, and she found herself sorely tempted to lean in and kiss him. She settled instead for placing a hand on his thigh.

"I can't believe you even have to ask that." She told him, wilting with relief at the warmth in his gaze, and squeezed his leg firmly. "I can't do this without you. Of course I can't. Come on, let's get going."

"OK." He nodded once, decisively, then got promptly to his feet and turned towards the gate.

They walked out of the camp side by side, of course, eighty-six teenagers hot on their heels, and Clarke was startled by the realisation that she actually had no idea what had happened in the last two days while she'd been on her misadventure. She'd found herself a bit too distracted to ask, on her return, between the grounder scouts and the hanging, but she needed to remember her responsibilities now.

"Did anything I need to know about happen while I was gone?"

"You mean besides the obvious bits?" Bellamy asked, trying for a smirk but falling rather short, Clarke thought. She gave him a glare that was intended to convey that being hanged was no laughing matter, and it seemed that she was mostly successful. "Not much else." He continued. "Raven propositioned me." He added that last under his breath, and Clarke found herself blinking foolishly as she tried to keep up.

"What?" She was sure she was not usually this deficient in understanding.

"Raven wanted to have sex with me." He stated it as if it were an observation on the weather, or a comment on the guard schedule.

"Well, I can't blame her. You are pretty great in the sack." Even to her own ears, her voice sounded forced.

"I said no, by the way." He offered, quietly, eyes fixed on the path in front of him.

"You - you did?" Now she was even more confused.

"Yeah. Told her I wasn't really into casual sex at the moment." He shrugged with an affected nonchalance that might fool the eighty-odd other teenagers around them, but was not convincing her in the slightest. "Preferring my sex deliberate for now, you know?"

Well, that changed things.

"Yeah." She was pretty sure she was supposed to say something more meaningful than that, but found herself utterly unable to do so.

"I'm sorry I didn't send out a search party sooner. I guess I thought you and Spacewalker had, you know, gone to look for some privacy." He seemed to be finding the dirt beneath his fingernails particularly fascinating at this point, and she was becoming worried that he might fall over through inattention to the path. "Stupid of me, I should take better care of my people. And I shouldn't have doubted you. Whoever you want to sleep with, I know you know better than to stay outside of camp overnight."

"Hey, if you need forgiveness, I'll give that to you. You're forgiven." He caught her reference, and turned slightly to meet her eye and quirk his lips up just a little. "But really? You thought I was still carrying on with Finn?"

"I'm kind of an idiot sometimes."

She was about to agree with him when the arrow found its mark.

…...

Bellamy wondered what it would have been like, if he'd met Clarke in another lifetime without the death of the Ark and one hundred juvenile delinquents clinging to life. He supposed, while he directed some of their better marksmen towards their foxholes, that they would probably have had no reason at all to get to know each other had circumstance not forced them into each other's company. Certainly, they'd have had no reason whatsoever to start sleeping together. But then again, they'd also have had no reason to disagree over life-or-death issues of strategy, or to fear for their lives, and he couldn't help feeling that it might be easier to build a meaningful relationship under those circumstances. Not that he necessarily wanted a meaningful relationship with her, of course. And she certainly showed no signs at all of wanting such a thing with him. He just thought that, really, it would have been nice to have the _choice_.

All the same, his focus now needed to be on shooting straight. Maybe they'd have time later, if they were incredibly lucky, to start worrying about choices.

**a/n Thanks for reading!**


	7. Chapter 7

**a/n Thanks for your wonderful reading and reviewing - it's great that folks are enjoying reading this almost as much as I'm enjoying writing it. Happy reading!**

Bellamy had become familiar with terror. He'd been afraid since the moment his sister had been born, in so many different ways and for so many different reasons, so really emerging from the tunnel to find the camp deserted should have been just another day of his life. But he couldn't help noticing that the more recent days of his life had been really quite a lot easier with Clarke by his side to share the load of leadership, and all he had by his side now was Finn, overcome with despair at losing the girl he thought he was in love with.

And then, of course, that idiot Spacewalker decided to shoot someone, as if that could possibly make any useful contribution to finding Clarke. Did the boy not understand that she wouldn't have wanted him to do that? That she could never love anyone who would kill for no good reason? That, if he wanted to deserve her, he needed to do better?

They would find her, this he was certain of. He would not accept failure, not this time, not when he hadn't even had a chance to say goodbye.

…...

Clarke had become familiar with terror. She'd been afraid since they arrived on this planet, in so many different ways and for so many different reasons, so really finding herself in a cold white room should have been just another day on the ground. And as for realising people were being drained for their blood, and then fleeing by jumping off a dam, of all things, and then running through a forest with her greatest enemy – well, she'd faced worse before.

But, of course, for most of the _worse_ that she'd faced before, Bellamy had been by her side. Or at her back. Or, best of all, beneath her hips. And so it was quite tricky, really, coping with all these things in a world in which he was dead. Dead by her hand, too, if she let herself think about it, because she'd been the one to pull the lever and close the door. Dead, but neither properly buried nor properly mourned, because they'd been snatched by the Mountain Men and had rather a lot of other things to get on with. Dead, and gone, and not coming back.

She choked back a sob and got on with that running through a forest with her mortal enemy thing. There would be time later, she reminded herself, when she made it back to her people. Not time for forgiveness and meaningful conversations and make up sex, not any more, but at least time for saying goodbye.

…...

Clarke couldn't quite believe it when she woke up in a hospital bed with her mother standing over her. For a crazy moment, she allowed herself to hope that, perhaps, the last year or so of her life had been nothing more than a particularly vivid nightmare. But then she felt the sting of the wound on her cheek and realised that, if it was a nightmare, she was still living it.

"Did anyone else make it here?" She asked, not sure why she bothered. She was certain the Mountain Men were too thorough to leave the job half done.

"Yes. Six of you did." She felt her heart give a hiccup at the news.

"Bellamy?" She rushed to ask, not allowing herself to dwell on what the stuttering in her chest might mean. "And Finn?"

"Yes. Both safe and sound."

She felt her heart regain its normal rhythm at that, and the blood flood to her cheeks, and found herself babbling rather like the distressed child she'd had to pretend not to be, of late. "I thought they were dead. I thought you were dead. I thought you were dead."

"I'm right here. And they should be back soon."

"Back? Where are they?"

"Looking for you, of course." That news was all she needed to sit up and start getting to her feet. Her people were out there, on a fool's errand, and she had to go put things right.

And maybe just a tiny part of her wanted to see Bellamy as soon as possible.

"Oh, hey, Clarke, slow down. Hey. It's too soon."

"Mum, we need to move against Mount Weather. How many guards are here? And where did Bellamy go looking for me?"

"Clarke, please. You need to rest."

"I don't need to rest. I'm fine. And I don't need you to protect me. What I need is to save my friends." Her tirade was interrupted by a guard she didn't entirely recognise rushing into the room.

"Ma'am. Movement in the north woods."

"Grounders?" Her mother asked, appearing nervous.

"I don't think so." The guard said, with a surprisingly warm look in Clarke's direction. "I think it's those kids who went looking for your daughter."

…...

Bellamy was pretty sure that the blonde blur rushing towards him was the best thing he'd ever seen. Not that he'd admit that to anyone, of course. But now she was back in his arms, where he was starting to think she _belonged_, and his oblivious sister seemed surprised that they were hugging but he didn't think anything had ever surprised him less than that he was holding onto her like he would never let her go.

In the back of his mind, however, he was already starting to realise what this meant. Putting the pieces together, he understood that they didn't have time for the reunion he really wanted.

Finn was out there. With a gun. And a rather tenuous grip on sanity.

"I missed you." He murmured into her hair.

"Me? Or just our little arrangement?" Her voice was full of teasing and he very much wanted to get on with their _little arrangement_ there and then. But duty called.

He pulled away reluctantly, with the barest whisper of a _you_ he hoped she couldn't hear.

"Finn's out looking for you. We need to go."

…...

Clarke knew she needed to stop staring at Bellamy before Octavia noticed.

But that didn't seem to be something she could achieve right now. Somewhere deep inside her was a simmering fear that if she ever let him out of her sight he would disappear again. And she'd be trapped within a cold heartless mountain without him.

They moved quickly through the forest, Octavia taking the lead, nobody talking much. Clarke wasn't sure where to start. Last time she'd seen him, she'd been closing the dropship door and preparing to blow up the area where he was stranded. The weight of things left unsaid was preying on her mind.

But every so often, she caught him staring back. And she was sure their hands brushed rather too often to be accidental. And when there was a fallen tree in their path and he turned to help her over it with his warm hands on her waist to hold her steady – well, that didn't seem like the kind of thing he'd be doing if he was completely furious with her. And that enthusiastic hug earlier, and the whispering into her hair, that surely had to mean _something_. She just wished he would speak to her, properly talk it out, but of course words weren't really their thing, and it didn't seem like screwing whilst on a mission with his little sister was likely to be on the cards.

"It's OK." He said finally, late that evening, while Octavia was curled up on the other side of the fire, either sleeping or pretending to sleep. Meanwhile, they were both staring into the fire rather than looking at each other and it slightly made her want to scream. "It had to be done."

"That doesn't make it any easier to live with."

He reached out a hand. She accepted the contact, feeling the heat of his palm against hers, and slowly turned to meet his gaze.

"Walk with me, Princess?"

It was different, this time, she would reflect later. There was the obvious fact that she had been shoved up against a tree, in the middle of a forest, in the middle of an urgent mission – a far cry from the conventional tent-based sex that had formed the basis of their arrangement to date. But that wasn't what was bothering her, if she was being honest. There was something in the way that he'd cried her name, muffled against her hair, and she'd groaned his name against his neck, and there seemed to be something she could best describe as _passion_ going on, which made her feel... unsteady. Somewhat _off-kilter_. As if, maybe, she wasn't mistaken in thinking he might care after all.

**a/n Thanks for reading!**


	8. Chapter 8

**a/n Thanks for the lovely reviews last chapter. Please enjoy a couple of oblivious idiots learning about jealousy!**

Bellamy stretched out on his comfortable chancellor-allocated bed in his comfortable chancellor-allocated quarters and reached the unsurprising conclusion that he would be getting little sleep tonight. The hour was growing late and he could hear nothing but silence coming from the surrounding rooms, but he just couldn't get used to this distressingly _pleasant_ accommodation he'd been given in gratitude for his mission to search for Clarke, not after all those months sleeping on rough blankets underneath canvas.

And he certainly couldn't get used to having this large bed entirely to himself, he thought, but he knew he'd have no company tonight. Just as he'd always known it would happen, Clarke had moved in with her mother the moment they were reunited without giving the slightest sign that he meant anything more to her than as a vague annoyance and competent colleague. He wondered briefly about heading to the impromptu bar that had sprung up on the other side of the camp, trying his luck with some other curvy blonde, but he knew it wouldn't be the same. No one else was quite as distracting as his princess.

He needed to stop thinking about her. She was now, presumably, fully restored to her rightful position as Ark royalty and was certainly not thinking about him. She would have no further use for him now. In fact, he realised abruptly, _no one_ would have any use for him now that the adults had landed. He would probably just go back to being a janitor and -

A light knock sounded at the door, so quietly that he wondered if, perhaps, his imagination was playing tricks on him. All the same, he figured he might as well check it out as not. Without stopping to rectify the fact he was dressed only in a pair of boxers he hopped out of bed and padded to the door.

"Clarke?" He asked, not a little incredulously, because it certainly _was_ Clarke who was standing there looking as if there was no place she'd rather be late at night than standing in the corridor outside his room.

"Hey." She murmured with a soft smile. "Are you going to invite me in?"

"Sorry. Yeah, of course." He stepped aside and allowed her through the door. "What are you doing here?"

She looked at him like he'd lost his mind and took a seat at the foot of his bed. "What am I usually doing when I come to your door in the middle of the night, Bellamy?"

"Point taken. I just meant – now your mum's back..."

"Yeah, sorry I'm a bit late." She shrugged and kicked her shoes off, curling her legs up beside her, while he looked on in some bemusement. "We had a lot of catching up to do. But she's gone to bed now, and I told her I was popping out to ask Raven something. Not sure why I bothered, really. If she can send me down here to die I think probably she's lost any right to care who I'm sleeping with."

"So you're still sleeping with me?" He asked in confusion, taking a seat beside her. "Even though the chancellor's back and you can get on with being the princess again? And even though I was an idiot and let Finn go off with only Murphy? And even though -"

"Yes. I'm still sleeping with you. Although, right now, it seems I'm actually sitting on your bed waiting for you to remember why I'm here." She teased him, running a hand down his bare chest in a motion that was rather effective at kicking his thoughts back into shape.

"Hint taken." He told her and leaned in for a kiss. Maybe it was just his imagination, but he could swear that, tonight, her lips tasted even sweeter than usual.

…...

Sex with Bellamy was usually good – after all, Clarke mused, that was why she'd been quite so keen on it in the last month or so – but she was pretty sure it wasn't usually _this _good. Their usual was rather more businesslike, she seemed to remember, rather focused on distracting both of them as efficiently as possible, with none of the lingering _attention_ he'd shown her tonight. And when he'd worked his way down the length of her body until his head was between her legs – well, that was definitely a first, and one that made her pretty damn certain he was trying to show her he cared.

"You OK?" He asked when they were both thoroughly satisfied and she was beginning to doze off, her head still pillowed on his toned stomach.

"I'm OK." She confirmed. "Definitely better than _not bad_." She teased him, recalling the last time they'd had this conversation.

"Yeah, you definitely are better than not bad." She could hear the grin in his voice as he started stroking her hair.

She snuggled her cheek against him a little, finding a comfortable position, and was almost asleep when he next broke the silence.

"I'm not trying to throw you out, of course, but do you think your mum might wonder why talking to Raven is taking so long?" He asked, not sounding altogether happy at the idea.

"She's asleep, she won't notice." She said dismissively.

"If you're sure."

"I was... I was actually going to stay, if that's OK, of course." She got the suggestion out in a rush and felt him still beneath her cheek at her words.

"I'd like that, Princess." He murmured, and resumed his stroking of her hair.

"In that case, you'd better move over." She told him, removing her head from his stomach and reluctantly breaking the contact between the crown of her head and his hand. "I'm going to want some space on the pillow."

He chuckled and shuffled over a bit, and she curled up alongside him, her back to his front, and of course he understood her silent invitation and wrapped himself tightly around her.

"Sleep well." He whispered, and she was sure she felt him place the lightest of kisses on the back of her neck.

…...

She slept longer than she had intended to the following morning, and woke up to the sight of Bellamy leaning on his elbow and watching over her.

"Morning, Princess." He greeted her with a smile as she blinked sleep from her eyes. "Did you sleep well?"

"Really well." She told him truthfully. "Not a single nightmare."

"Me neither." He wasn't quite meeting her eyes, clearly not altogether comfortable with this attempt at a meaningful conversation about his feelings. "We should try that again some time."

"Yeah." She agreed with an easy smile. "I'd better go now though. My mother will probably worry if she doesn't see me eventually."

"Will I see you tonight?" He asked as she began to pull on her clothes, and she didn't think she was imagining that he sounded a little nervous.

"I expect you'll see me at breakfast." She told him briskly as she picked up her jacket, willing herself not to get too excited at the idea that making plans together was a thing he wanted to do. "There's only one dining hall. But yes, I'll be here tonight too. Unless something else goes wrong on this damn planet before then."

He reached towards her and caught her hand in his own. "Hey. Clarke, we'll be OK. And we'll get the kids out of Mount Weather."

"Of course we will. We just need to convince the chancellor to let us." She said with a humourless smile and turned towards the door.

"Clarke?" Her hand was on the door handle but she turned back at the sound of his voice, just in time for him to capture her lips in a gentle kiss. It lasted barely a handful of seconds but all the same, she thought it might have turned her world upside down ever so slightly.

She was in a daze for most of the walk home, wondering quite when gentle good morning kisses had become a part of their repertoire, whether perhaps she was a fool for allowing herself to believe that it meant what she thought it meant. It had to mean something, surely. She was pretty sure it wasn't possible to give someone a gentle good morning kiss by accident. Just as, if she was being honest, she hadn't gone to his room last night by accident, either. In fact, if she was really going to go for this whole honesty thing, it was about time she acknowledged that she was beginning to care about him, rather a lot, and that this damn kiss she was currently overthinking had made her day.

Her daze was broken rather abruptly when she realised her mother was sitting just inside the door of their living quarters, waiting for her.

"How's Bellamy?" She asked, before she'd even closed the door, and Clarke felt her mouth drop open at the realisation that her mother knew exactly where she'd been.

"I – I don't know what you're talking about."

"Please, Clarke. I'm not stupid. There's obviously something going on between the two of you."

"I don't know what you mean. Not that it would be any of your business, anyway."

"You're right, of course. I'm not going to try to interfere. I just wanted to remind you that he shot your best friend's father, was arrested for a fistfight within moments of my meeting him, and has, from what I hear, slept with almost every young woman who was on that dropship with you."

She maintained a stony silence and waited for her mother to tell her something she didn't already know.

"And yet, for all that, he looks at you like you're something precious." She looked up in shock at that, because there was no way that could be the truth. She had to be exaggerating, trying to get a rise out of her. "And I suppose that's what any mother wants for her little girl. I just – tell me you know what you're doing, Clarke?"

"I know what I'm doing, mum."

…...

It had been a long day, Clarke thought, as she sat at the table they had quickly adopted as _theirs_ and waited for Bellamy to dispose of his shadow. Every time she'd seen him, in flashes when she went to grab food or a comfort break during her mammoth shift in medical, it seemed Mel was glued to his side. It was all a bit foolish, really, she thought. Just because he'd saved her life didn't mean the girl needed to follow him everywhere. For goodness sake, he'd saved _her_ life before now and she was capable of sitting perfectly patiently and waiting for him to walk over to her.

Well, perhaps _perfectly patiently_ was stretching the truth. All the same, she was at least capable of sitting. And wondering why it was taking him so long to ditch Mel and get over here. They'd made plans that morning – she remembered getting just a little overexcited about it – and he'd pulled her aside earlier to whisper in her ear that he'd meet her to talk about the defences at Mount Weather and review her sketched map, but it seemed like she was wasting her time.

In the end, of course, he appeared just as she stood up to leave, an improbably bright smile on his face that only made her frown all the more.

"I'm going to bed." She declared, less than gently. "We can look at the map tomorrow. But I've had a long day stitching people back together and I'm going home."

His smile started to slide away at that, as if he was beginning to understand the implication of her words. "Isn't your mum going to be there? Come to mine instead? I'll go now, wait a minute then follow me?"

At that, it would be fair to say that her patience snapped completely. "So it's fine for you to spend the entire day flirting with Mel, but I'm still some dirty secret who has to sneak to your room? And after I've spent the entire day watching her follow you around, I'm supposed to still want to follow orders from you?"

She watched his expression morph into indignation at her words. "Hey, I'm trying to protect you, here. Heaven forbid the chancellor finds out her daughter's sleeping with a janitor." He sneered, rather unlike the man who'd kissed her so gently when she left his room that morning.

"She already knows, you idiot." She exploded, rather more loudly than was perhaps wise given their surroundings and potential audience. "She's fine with it. She even said – no, actually."

"She said what?"

"It doesn't matter"

"It obviously does matter. What did she say?" It seemed he was not inclined to let this one drop and she felt the colour rising in her cheeks at the thought of what she had almost given away.

"Nothing. It's obviously not true anyway." She stated bitterly, noting that he still had not refuted her claims about Mel.

He took a deep breath and stared her down for a couple more seconds before shrugging and allowing the merest hint of a smirk to lift the corners of his lips. "Can we maybe stop arguing about nothing now and go to bed?"

"Yeah." She let out a grudging laugh. It seemed she really was in need of distracting, tonight. "Sure. Let's go."

She didn't bother waiting for him to get a head start in the end, but simply fell into step beside him as he headed for his bed, heedless of the risk of being noticed by those around them. After all, walking to her colleague's room with him – well, that didn't have to mean anything.

…...

Bellamy didn't know what to make of Clarke's relationship with Finn - or, rather, Finn's _attempts_ at a relationship with Clarke. There had obviously been something there, something real, and something significant enough to send her running into his arms and him running into a grounder village. But he couldn't help noticing that he knew full well where she was spending her nights, and it wasn't with Spacewalker. And – well – not that he would have been in danger of feeling jealousy anyway, of course, because that wasn't how his arrangement with Clarke worked – but it was a lot easier to get on with being the trusted friend Finn needed right now when there was nothing at all to be hypothetically jealous of.

He found himself wondering from time to time, as he trained with the guard that day, if perhaps Clarke might have needed to remind herself that jealousy wasn't a feature of this thing that was between them, too. He couldn't stop thinking about that stupid argument they'd had last night, when she'd suddenly wanted to complain about the way Mel was trailing around after him, of all people. When had he ever shown the slightest inclination to talk strategy and share annoyingly fulfilling deliberate sex and rather sweet morning kisses with _Mel_?

He was normally a pretty good shot, he thought ruefully, looking back on his training session as he sat down at their usual table and waited for Clarke to show up for supper. It was almost like something had been distracting him all day.

"How was training?" She asked, as she took a seat some minutes later and deposited a plate in front of each of them, and he found himself noting without displeasure that asking after each other's day seemed to be a thing that they did, now.

"Not bad." He said, leaving aside the question of what it might mean that his mind had kept wandering to her. "How was med bay? Any less busy today?"

"Yeah, a little better, thanks." She smiled warmly at him, and he smiled back, and they sort of sat there smiling for a while before she seemed to remember that mindless smiling was not really part of the script and steered them back to the task at hand with a clearing of her throat. "So, here's the map."

He studied the sketch and noted idly that she was rather good at drawing, and it was a shame he hadn't had chance to notice that under more peaceful circumstances. It seemed like the sort of thing he might have attempted to compliment, if he were more of a _compliments_ sort of a guy. And if this thing that was between them was more of a compliments sort of a relationship.

"I got out through a tunnel that led in this direction, over the dam." She pointed to the map. "It's all connected to the mine system, that's our way in."

"Are you sure we can get past the reapers and the mountain men?" He asked through a mouthful of supper, remembering that she had said the reapers in particular roamed the tunnels en masse.

"No. Not sure at all. But we'll have to find a way, won't we?"

"Yes. And before long, too. I swear to god if your mum doesn't sanction the mission soon I'm going by myself."

"You won't be by yourself." He found himself in danger of doing the mindless smiling thing again at that, but the grin was quickly wiped off his face at the distressed look in Clarke's eyes. He followed her gaze and saw Finn heading towards them with a determined slant to his brow.

"How's Finn doing?" He asked, wondering why she was looking like that at a boy she'd once been in danger of falling in love with. Would she end up looking like that at him too, one day, when he ultimately screwed up and did something unforgivable?

"I haven't talked to him since we got back. I don't know what to say, he just kept shooting."

"We're at war, Clarke, we've all done things." He swallowed a mouthful of supper with difficulty, praying that she wouldn't stop to count the number of mistakes _he _had made.

Finn arrived, and greeted each of them with an awkward _hey_, and Bellamy found himself thinking that this was probably his cue to leave, to give the pair of them some time to talk it out. One hand on his plate, he was on the point of pushing his chair back from the table when he caught Clarke's eye and understood only too clearly that she had really much rather he didn't go anywhere.

He wondered when that had happened, that they had learnt how to communicate wordlessly in this way.

"So, Mount Weather, what's the plan?" Finn went ahead and helped himself to a chair, thrusting his way into the conversation with something of his old enthusiasm for being in the thick of every heroic scheme.

"Still working on it." Clarke told him shortly.

"We'll let you know when we've worked it out." He spoke for both of them, knowing that they would need all of the help they could get, but reading in Clarke's gaze that she wasn't ready to offer the olive branch herself, not yet. But that was OK. He could bear that burden for her, for now.

**a/n Thanks for reading!**


	9. Chapter 9

**a/n Thanks for the lovely reviews on that last chapter. Happy reading!**

Clarke was fed up of Bellamy going missing, presumed dead. She'd mourned him after the battle with the grounders and the ambush by the mountain men, genuinely believed he was gone, but this time she reckoned he was still out there, somewhere. And she didn't think this was entirely delusional, didn't think she was just telling herself he was alive because the world would be so unbearable with him dead. After the acid fog had cleared they'd searched everywhere and found not a trace of a body, so she chose to presume that he and Octavia had to be hiding out in safety, even as her mother kept telling her that she was _sorry_. All the same, however firm her faith in him might be, she couldn't help wishing that he would get himself into trouble a little less often.

It had been two long lonely days since that misbegotten expedition to the radio mast – and even longer, lonelier, nightmare-filled nights - and she was in danger of buying into her mother's condolences when he walked back into her life. She felt his sudden warmth behind her as she stood in the thick of the crowd and didn't stop to overanalyse what it meant that she knew it was him, from the sound of his breathing, from the smell of his unwashed jacket, but simply got on with squeezing his hand under the cover of the crush of people in a blatant demonstration of just how much she'd missed him.

"Where have you been?" She asked, trying her best not to sound anywhere approaching hysterical.

"In the dropship. You need to come back with me right now."

"Why? What's happened?" Her mind jumped in panic to the possibility that something had happened to Octavia, but he looked too composed for that to be the case.

"It's Lincoln. I'll explain on the way. Grab a med kit then meet me at Raven's gate." He made to turn away, but she clung stubbornly to his hand.

"Hey. Hang on. Are you OK?" She searched his face for any sign of what on Earth had been going on for the last two days.

"I'm OK." He told her with a weak smile and a light press of her fingers. "But we need to get going."

…...

Bellamy was fed up of feeling useless. He wanted to help his sister bear the weight of her concern for the man she loved, and he wanted to help Clarke bear the pressure of trying to cure him, but all he'd provided so far was a little muscle and some empty words of encouragement. He had been starting to think his days of feeling useless were over, in those last days at the dropship camp while he and Clarke led the delinquents side by side, that perhaps he might have found something resembling a place and a purpose. But it seemed that business as usual had now resumed, he mused, as he watched Clarke get on with running the world while he trotted pathetically along behind her.

Just for once in his life, it would have been nice to feel that he was of some use, to someone, for some reason.

It was just as well, though, he reflected, that he had nothing meaningful to do. Based on the way he'd managed to overlook those extra barrels of guns at that depot, or left Atom behind to die, or got his sister arrested, he couldn't help but feel that things seemed to go wrong when he was in charge. He wasn't sure, really, why Clarke had told him those short weeks ago that _she couldn't do this without him_. He was pretty certain that all he was doing right now with his well-intentioned comments and occasional touch of her shoulder was impairing her concentration, distracting her from her life-or-death task.

Oh, yes. That was his role, after all. He was there to be a _distraction_.

"Your mother would be proud of you." He told her gently while she stood over the man who used to be Lincoln with tears quivering in her eyes. If he couldn't be of any actual use, he at least needed to try to show her that he was there to care for her.

"My mother would know how to save him." She snapped, and returned her focus to the task at hand.

He largely gave up after that, and kept watch from the corner of the room over these two women who meant the world to him. He stepped up briefly to point a gun at an intruder, but of course even _that_ was the wrong thing to do as it turned out that, in fact, he was some friend of this terrifying creature his sister was in love with.

He lowered his gun and retreated only a little resentfully back to his post.

…...

Clarke had often had cause to be grateful for Bellamy's presence in recent weeks, for his instinctive understanding of how best to support or distract her no matter what the world could throw at them. But she didn't think she'd ever been so grateful for his presence as she was today. The logical part of her brain argued that it was at least in part because of those two days she'd had to endure without him, wondering if he was even still alive, and that this was all just a bit of an overreaction to seeing him again, safe and sound. But she knew, if she was being honest, that there was quite a lot more to it than that. There was something in the way he stood by her while she battled to keep Lincoln alive, something in the way he seemed to be branching out and experimenting with telling her what she needed to hear, something in the way his eyes watched her so carefully even from across the room.

Something that told her that caring for him was no mistake. In fact, it might just have been the most sensible thing she'd ever done. She filed that thought away for later. As ever, there were lives to be saved before she could live her own.

"I've got an idea for the peace treaty." She informed Bellamy and Octavia once Lincoln was stable, although it was quite clear that only the former was listening. Unsurprisingly, the younger girl was rather preoccupied with murmuring incoherently in her lover's ear.

"Yeah?"

"Yeah. I know what we can offer them now." She gestured at Lincoln's quiet rest with the cloth she had been using to clean her hands. "I need to go speak to their commander, bring her here to see what we can do."

"Want me to come with you?" He asked immediately, just as she could have guessed he would.

"No." She responded instantly and watched his face fall just a little. "Stay with your sister. She needs you, after that."

She didn't allow herself to wonder whether she might need him for the challenge that lay ahead of her, too.

"If you're sure."

"I am." She glanced in Octavia's direction to check the girl was still not listening before she summoned her courage and had a go at speaking her mind. "Thanks for offering, though. Knowing that you always have my back, it's... yeah. It means a lot. Thanks."

"Any time." He replied with an easy smile. "Just making sure I get laid tonight."

She giggled at that despite the mission before her. "I need to go. I'll see you later."

"Stay safe." He muttered, and reached out to pull her into a firm hug.

…...

She was about half way to the grounders' camp when she resolved that she ought to let Bellamy come with her, next time she found herself going on a perilous mission that would decide the fate of their people. She might not _need_ him, not in the way his sister did, but she was fast becoming convinced that she _wanted_ him by her side when the going got tough.

And this certainly counted as tough, she decided as the day wore on. The journey itself only compounded the exhaustion she felt after so many long days on the ground and so many misadventures. And then she found herself facing a wall of humanity, bristling with weapons, and had to choke out a request to meet the woman who held their future in her hands.

Of course, that was the most frightening bit of all, that fierce and somewhat stunning woman who had the power to wipe out everyone she cared about, and knew it. But there was something in the look in her eyes the moment she walked into that room that told her she might win this round. And she knew she had the trump card of healing the reapers firmly up her sleeve, and once she'd shown Lexa Lincoln's recovery and they'd got over that brief misunderstanding with the drawn swords things seemed to be looking up. And really, in a world where Bellamy was no longer missing and not yet dead, she was becoming ever more convinced that everything would turn out for the best.

"You may have your truce." Lexa confirmed at last, later that evening, and Clarke felt herself deflate with relief.

"Thank you." She responded fervently, trying not to sound too pathetic in her gratitude.

"I just need one thing in return."

"Tell me."

"Deliver me the one you call Finn. Our truce begins with his death."

She did not collapse at that, as she might have done two months ago. She had become strangely immune to pain since landing on this horrific planet. And she did not panic or flap or betray her emotions to this woman who was, it was clear, still very much her enemy. No, she just found herself drowning in a small torrent of self-loathing. How had it happened, that she had not even thought of this possibility? _Of course_ the grounders would want revenge. Of course, to them, this would look like justice. And now, a boy she once thought she might be falling in love with was being asked to pay for this peace treaty with his blood.

He had only killed them for her.

She might not have wanted them dead, but he had thought he was doing it all for her. And she'd been so _distracted_ by Bellamy, and her concern over his missing-presumed-dead routine, that she hadn't even stopped to be concerned that, in doing what he'd done to find her, Finn had put himself in the firing line.

She needed to get back to camp. She needed to find Finn, and she needed to find a way to make this all OK.

…...

Bellamy was rather at a loss, he didn't mind admitting it. This situation with Finn's death sentence reminded him rather too strongly of that time when they'd seen the exodus ship crash and had thought that Abby was dead, and he'd not had the first clue how to go about comforting Clarke at the loss of someone with whom she had a relationship that was complicated to say the least. He was ashamed, looking back at that now, that his first reaction had been not to bother comforting her at all. If nothing else, he resolved, this time he would do better than that.

But it wasn't clear how to go about doing better right now, when she would barely meet his eye, and when they'd barely spoken since she walked back through those gates. She seemed to have appointed herself as Finn's personal bodyguard, and was following him everywhere with an odd sort of guilty look in her eye. He knew he shouldn't be jealous that she was protecting Finn now, given the circumstances. He knew that there was nothing to be jealous of in a death sentence and a twisted sense of obligation.

But he missed her all the same.

And, apart from anything else, it turned out it was a lot harder for him to protect her when she was, in turn, trying to protect Finn. And even harder to protect her when everything went wrong and suddenly they were fleeing through the forest and desperately hoping for some impossible solution. That point in particular was brought rather sharply into focus when Finn stumbled into the dropship cradling her motionless body.

"What happened?" Bellamy gasped in something of a panic. If Spacewalker had manged to get Clarke seriously hurt – well, he might just kill the boy himself.

"A grounder hit her on the head." Finn sounded at least as worried as he felt.

"Put her here." Murphy of all people rushed into action while Bellamy stood wondering whether the dropship was really swaying beneath his feet or whether it was just his imagination.

He forced himself into action and ran over to inspect the damage. A wound on her forehead was bleeding sluggishly and her face was disconcertingly still. Clarke's face wasn't made or stillness, he decided. It was made for wry laughter, and judgemental stares, and most especially for kissing.

"I need a bandage." He requested of the room at large. "A rag. Anything."

"Here." Murphy thrust a cloth into his hand and he made haste to press it to the wound.

"Clarke, can you hear me?" He brushed a curl of hair back from her cheek and let his thumb linger there a little longer than was strictly necessary. "Clarke? You're going to be fine. You just need to rest." He wondered whether he was trying to convince his unresponsive patient or himself.

He was vaguely aware of Raven and Finn muttering behind him as the minutes passed, but he ignored them in favour of concentrating on the woman whose head was currently lying in his lap. Her colour was a little better, he thought, and her pulse and breathing were steady, but he didn't like the fact that she still hadn't woken up. He would, he resolved, simply have to sit with her until she came round, and Spacewalker and his friends could damn well defend themselves for now.

He spared a moment to be grateful that, if anyone noticed the excess of tenderness with which he cared for her, they had the sense to keep quiet. It seemed that, in the face of Finn's impending death, the question of what it might mean that Bellamy wouldn't let go of Clarke's hand wasn't really a priority, right now.

**a/n Thanks for reading!**


	10. Chapter 10

**a/n Thank you for your reviews on the last chapter. ****Please be aware that some of the opinions expressed about Lexa in this chapter are from unreliable-narrator-Bellamy's point of view, and are certainly not mine. For a more mature Bellamy's take on Clarke's relationship with Lexa, maybe check out my other story, _Bellarke in a Bunker_...**

**Please enjoy the angst-fest that is the aftermath of Finn's death and _love is weakness_ and Bellamy setting out for Mount Weather! **

Bellamy thought he was something of an expert in being left behind. He'd always felt rather _left behind_ by life on the Ark, which passed him by while he spent every moment of every day protecting Octavia. And then his sister and mother had left him behind when they were arrested and floated. And, for all that it was hardly their choice, Clarke and the forty-seven had left him behind when they were taken by Mount Weather.

But nothing quite compared to this moment, this standing by the gate of the camp and watching Clarke walk out to face the world alone. He had known from the moment he learned of Lexa's terms that there was only one way this could end, that Finn would die with or without his people accepting that fact. And he knew that Clarke had known it too – he couldn't explain how, but he was rather adept at reading her eyes, these days. But that didn't make it any easier to be left behind now, when she walked out of those gates alone and set out towards the boy who loved her, tied to a tree, hoping she could solve all his problems. Bellamy understood it, now. Being with Clarke, it didn't _solve_ all his problems. It just kept him strong enough to solve them himself.

He saw her hand shake around the knife and hoped with everything that was in him that she could feel his fervent sympathy across the distance between them. Because he knew what she needed to use that knife for. This plan of Raven's about stabbing Lexa was pure fantasy. There was only one person going to die by Clarke's hand tonight.

He just wished he could be by her side to face it.

…...

Bellamy was scared of the look in Clarke's eyes. He had known all along, somehow, he thought, that when Finn died she would fall apart at least a little, even if she had meant more to him than he had to her. And there were better places to fall apart than this road full of Arkers and Grounders on the walk to TonDC. At least if she'd fallen apart in his room, she'd have had some privacy, and at least there he'd have been able to comfort her in the only way he knew how. For all the time he'd had to think about what he might say to her as they walked this road together he was no closer to having an answer. In fact, all he was closer to was a plan to put more distance between them.

"Hey, you doing all right?" He wondered whether anyone would notice if he took her hand as they walked. Maybe it would only make the suggestion he's about to put forward even more painful.

"Yeah." It certainly didn't sound like she was doing alright.

"You did the right thing."

"Now I get to live with it." His heart hiccuped a little at that, because he remembered when she said the same thing about him, that first morning when she had started to mean something to him. "You still think this truce is a bad idea, don't you?" It turned out that, even distressed and unable to think straight, Clarke Griffin was still annoyingly perceptive.

"I think we're wasting our time on politics while our friends are in trouble."

"We need their army to get to Mount Weather, Bellamy, and you know it."

"Their army has been getting their ass kicked by Mount Weather forever. What we need is an inside man. Someone to be our eyes and ears." He could see the horror in her expression the moment she realised what he meant by that.

"Forget it. It's too dangerous."

"Clarke, if you can make it out, I can make it in." He was itching to get on with doing something about the situation. He _hated_ sitting around here and playing politics while his people were dying.

"I said no." It was an instruction to drop the subject, and one he chose to ignore.

"Since I don't take orders from you, I'm going to need a better reason." He didn't like pushing her like this, but they needed to get on with this if they were going to stand a chance of rescuing anyone. And he had to admit it, part of him wanted to hear her say the real reason why she didn't want him to go.

"I can't lose you too, OK?" The pain in her voice was unmistakable, and he wondered how he could ever have believed he didn't care about this woman. She reached out for his hand, oblivious to the crowd around them, and hung on as if for dear life, as if imploring him to stay by her side.

"OK." He rubbed his thumb over the back of her hand as he agreed softly, unwilling to make this impossible day any worse for her. "I won't bring it up again." And, in spite of his earlier thoughts, about _playing politics_ versus _getting on with _it, somehow he found that he meant it.

She didn't keep his hand for long, seeming to remember that it wasn't really something they did, indulging in what could be mistaken for physical displays of affection in public. After all, that would imply their relationship involved _affection_, rather than being entirely _physical_. But she did stay by his side even more closely than usual, and he did the same for her, and he didn't think that he was imagining that she was glad of his presence.

That evening, when they were setting up camp for the night, brought almost the first occasion all day when she strayed further than an arm's length out of his reach. For reasons he didn't entirely understand, she crossed to the other side of the fire to unwrap her bedroll, and he felt his protective instincts seethe because really, did she need to get so close to the grounders? Had she not noticed that these people had made her kill a boy who loved her only twenty four hours earlier? Did she not realise what she was doing to his nerves, putting herself at risk like that? Before he could overthink it, or talk himself out of it, or remind himself that Clarke always knew what she was doing, he marched over to her.

"What are you doing, Clarke? It's safer on our side." He gestured to the area of the camp he had just come from.

"We need to trust them, Bellamy. There are no more sides." He wasn't sure if her words were ridiculously naive or endearingly idealistic, but either way there was no way he was leaving her stranded amongst these people alone. He grabbed his things and made up his bed scarcely a foot from where she had lay down and started pretending to sleep. It was only logical, he thought, that as her closest colleague he should want to look out for her, protect her, stay by her side in this unknown territory. And unlike the other times he had lay down next to her at night, he wasn't expecting to be allowed anything more than to watch over her. But if, under the cover of darkness, she were to reach towards him to entwine her fingers with his and take comfort in the contact – well, he certainly wouldn't stop her.

…...

Clarke fell asleep quickly, exhausted by the events of the day, but she didn't stay asleep long. The fires were still smouldering when she awoke, barely a couple of hours after they had laid out their bedding for the evening, and stared at the stars wondering what life would throw at her next. Wondering which death would be next, and hoping it wouldn't be one that weighed on her quite so heavily. Finn had meant something to her, she had to admit it, and even though they hadn't quite been on the same page it had hurt that she had to be the one who wielded the knife. Certainly, she noted, she had cared for him enough that her sleep was now haunted by his reproachful gaze.

Instinctively, without giving herself the chance to overthink it, she did what she'd done when in need of comfort for almost as long as she'd been on this planet, and reached for Bellamy. He'd fallen asleep a very polite distance from her, facing away so that she found herself wrapping her arm round his waist and burying her face in his firmly muscled shoulders. She wriggled a little, snuggling into his back, drawing as close to him as possible, drinking in the peace that came with his presence.

She stayed like that for some minutes, trying to get back to sleep, but eventually she decided her current situation was insufficient and started trying to manoeuvre an arm under his head.

"You OK there, Princess?" He whispered at that.

She froze in shock, having not realised he was awake to take in her rather needy behaviour, and wondered quite how to respond.

"Clarke?" He murmured when she didn't reply, and before she knew it he was rolling over and meeting her eyes in the soft glow of the embers of the fires.

"Bellamy."

"How are you doing?" He asked softly, reaching out to brush his thumb across her cheek. It took her longer than it probably should have done to realise that he was wiping away tears.

"I've been better." She admitted, reluctant to meet his eyes, and distracted herself by tracing his collarbone with her fingertips.

"Come here." He murmured, something in his voice that she could only interpret as _tenderness._

In no mood to argue, she snuggled deep into his embrace. It was no magic wand, being held by him, no perfect solution that could take the weight of the world from her shoulders, no instrument of resurrection to bring Finn back from the dead. But it was, she thought, as her tears soaked his shirt, probably the closest she could get to such a thing on this impossible planet. He made no attempt to speak to her and she made no attempt to encourage him to – after all, he knew exactly what was wrong, so there didn't seem a lot of point in asking the question. And they'd got quite good, really, at having meaningful conversations without words. So it was that she simply lay in his arms and took comfort from the warmth of his body and the caring hand rubbing gentle circles on her back.

She must have fallen asleep again, and slept pretty well, based on the fact that she woke up at dawn just as the camp was beginning to stir around them. Cautiously, she disentangled her fingers from his. Gently, she eased his arm from around her waist. Carefully, thoroughly, but not without a little hesitation, she reinstated that polite distance between them.

…...

Bellamy didn't like the haunted expression that still dulled Clarke's gaze. And he didn't much like the polite distance she'd put between them as she awoke that morning, for all that polite distance in public had always been a feature of their relationship. But he could still hold her together in private, as he had done last night, as she had done for him since the very beginning of whatever _this_ was that was between them, and that was enough for him, he decided, as they continued their walk to TonDC, and he kept pace by her side, and kept his silence as promised about his idea to infiltrate Mount Weather.

So it was that he did not start to worry until he overhead that horrifying conversation, as the flames devoured Finn's body, when out of nowhere it seemed that, all of a sudden, _love was weakness. _He couldn't for the life of him work out why she was even tolerating the notion, because since Finn's death he'd been putting quite a lot of effort into showing her that he could help her stay strong. And, well, while he might not necessarily be claiming that what they had going on was _love_, it certainly wasn't indifference. Not any more.

In fact, he realised, as she avoided him even while he saved her precious alliance from falling prey to Gustus, it hadn't been indifference for quite some time. Not for him, at least. But it seemed, now, as she refused to meet his eyes, that she'd taken Lexa's advice to heart and that she really was resolved to make both of them miserable. In fact, he was beginning to wonder if _advice_ wasn't the only thing she and Lexa were wondering about sharing. Even as Clarke could barely look at him, it seemed that she could barely keep her eyes off this new face that had walked into her life, and certainly the commander's gaze held more than polite curiosity. He started to wonder bitterly if perhaps that was how things would be, now. If perhaps he had outlived his usefulness, and been replaced by this new companion who was rather more relevant to her current situation. Who knew how to lead an army, rather than only a rabble of children. Who was closer to being part of Clarke's world than he could ever be.

No. He wasn't about to give up on her so easily. Had she not appeared at his door the last time he had started to give up on her, ready to show her how much he meant to her? All the same, the hollow feeling in his chest only grew worse as the day wore on and Clarke continued to avoid him at each and every possible opportunity.

Evening fell, and his sister approached with Lincoln, apparently intent on disturbing his peace as he sat moping by the fire.

"How did you know it was Gustus?"

"He'd do anything to protect her." He said with a careful shrug, forcing himself not to gaze at where Clarke and Raven were talking a little distance away. "So it made sense."

His sister, of course, saw right through him. Her gaze flickered between him, and Clarke, and back again, and she narrowed her eyes thoughtfully. "And look at the thanks he got."

His sister didn't understand, and he had no intention of enlightening her, that the look of wonder in Clarke's eyes every time he kissed her good morning was all the thanks he would ever need. And they'd get back there, together, once she had mourned Finn. He would make sure of it.

He was mercifully saved from having to manufacture a nonchalant diversion by Raven and Clarke approaching.

"Guys! Listen to this!" Raven held out the radio.

"47 of us are trapped inside Mount Weather." The voice was undoubtedly Monty's.

"Talk to him, say something." Octavia suggested.

"It's repeating." Raven told them.

"We don't know how much time we have left, please hurry." Monty's voice came over the handset again.

"We need to do this now." He turned instinctively to Clarke. "We've got the alliance, now is the time to use it."

"We need an inside man. You were right - without someone on the inside to lower their defences and turn off the acid fog an army's useless. You should go." He stared at her uncomprehendingly, rather too concerned with wondering why she was suddenly so keen for him to walk into danger to stop and consider that he did not, in fact, take orders from her.

"I thought you hated that plan." He reminded her bitterly. "That I would get myself killed."

"I was being weak, it's worth the risk." He felt the world stop moving at that, at the implication of love he now realised he'd been so desperate to hear, at the confirmation of his orders that somehow swept all of that clean away. "My map of Mount Weather. Find a way to get on that radio and talk to us. Good luck."

Without so much as a backwards glance she marched away in the direction of Lexa's tent.

"I can get you through the tunnels." Lincoln offered into the vacuum she'd left behind her, and he could feel his blood freezing in his veins because this was really happening. She had really ordered him to go on this ridiculous suicide mission and now she was really walking away from him, as if he meant less than nothing to her.

"Let me show you what to look for." That was Raven, and he reckoned he was probably supposed to go with her and find out what the hell he was doing.

"Yeah, of course." He found his voice at last. "Lincoln? Get what you need and say your goodbyes. We leave tonight."

…...

Raven's lecture was, mercifully, brief, and for once Bellamy found himself grateful for her slightly cutthroat no-nonsense approach.

"So, Raven, are we done here? I need to go get my stuff, say goodbye to people." He thought there might be a slightly too knowing look in her eyes at that, but she didn't press him, merely pulled him in for a quick hug and then sent him on his way.

Now, to find Clarke.

She was in Lexa's throne room, where somehow he _knew_ she would be, and he hated how well she was doing at pretending that she didn't care what she'd just done. He took a deep breath and marched in there. He was her... what, exactly? Second-in-command? Whatever he was, the grounders seemed to realise he was her _something_, so he figured no one would stop him from entering.

"Sorry to interrupt." He wasn't sorry to interrupt, not at all. He thought he would probably _never_ be sorry to interrupt this violent woman who had made Clarke haunt herself with nightmares of killing Finn and was now stealing her away from him. "I just need to borrow Clarke for a moment, confirm our plans." That sounded like something a second-in-command would say, he hoped, but the commander narrowed her eyes as if she could see straight through him. All the same, she nodded her permission, and Clarke followed him out of the tent. He dragged her with rather more efficiency than elegance to a quiet corner of the village.

"What's this about?" Her voice was cold, and not at all like her, and he briefly wondered if he had made a huge mistake. It was too late to stop now, he figured, as he continued on and into an apparently deserted building.

"I thought you might want to say goodbye properly." He tried for a smirk, but it died on his lips when he saw the distressingly _Lexa_-like frosty glare she was giving him. "Come on, Clarke, you can't tell me you're not up for it." He rested a hand on her hip, and pulled her close to him. "And, I mean, we might not see each other for ages." _Or ever again_, he added silently, but somehow he sensed that pointing that out would not help his case at this moment in time. She continued to look straight through him, and his hand froze on its journey. He swallowed the lump that seemed to be growing in his throat, and began to entertain the very real possibility that, for the first time in their entire acquaintance, she might say no to him. That perhaps this cold treatment might mean more than just being not in the mood.

"OK." He backed away from her, and found that the world was beginning to look surprisingly blurry. Going on a terrifyingly dangerous mission was one thing, but discovering that the woman who had been creeping into his heart no longer wanted him? That was something else. "I'm not going to force you, obviously. I... care too much about you to try to pressure you into doing this. I just thought that, you know, it's what we do, or it seems to be, anyway, and... it would mean a lot to me to have a proper goodbye before I go off on this... expedition."

"OK." He could hardly believe that she just said that, just changed her mind when he was growing so sure she would say no.

"Yeah?"

"Yeah." He breathed a sigh of relief, but then she ruined everything slightly more. "I mean, it's not like it matters, is it? It's not like it makes any difference. Just one more meaningless screw to add to our list." Well, if he hadn't realised he was falling for her before, he certainly realised it then, when he felt the world crumble around him somewhat at her flippant words. He wanted so badly to tell her that she was wrong, that he was going to be thinking about her every night they were apart – and, to be honest, quite often during the days as well – and that, in fact, she meant rather a lot to him. But he knew he had no chance of getting the words out right, and that, even if he did, in this mood she would never _hear_ the words right, so he resolved that he would just have to show her instead.

And with that resolution he began to rebuild his world a little, even if he didn't base it on the firmest of foundations. If he couldn't _tell_ her she was wrong – well, he decided with more anger than affection, he would prove her wrong all the same. She would regret sending him away. He would make sure of it.

…...

She should never have agreed to this, she realised it almost immediately.

He seemed to be kissing her rather more _deliberately_ than she was used to, and digging his fingernails into her back with a little more force than she had grown to expect, and his other hand was tangled in her hair, and this was all a bit of a departure from the script. If she didn't know better, she'd be tempted to think he was trying to prove a point, in case this was the last time they were together, but that didn't seem to be a useful train of thought at this moment in time.

Her knees weakened, forcing her to cling to his shoulders for support, and she found herself reflecting on Lexa's earlier words about _love_ and _weakness_. Because, really, it seemed to her that love wasn't her weakness. No, Bellamy Blake was her weakness. And he wasn't love, no way, he had nothing to do with love.

Or perhaps, she wondered idly as she clung to him, holding herself up, perhaps Bellamy Blake was her _strength_.

No. Absolutely not. That thought had no place here. It was an accidental misthought caused by his current interference with her ability to think logically.

She didn't mean it.

She resolved to push thoughts aside – and actually, that was quite easy to do, when Bellamy was trailing kisses along her collarbone as if trying to set every inch of her skin aflame. She was going to have plenty of opportunities to overthink the meaningful things in the coming weeks. For now, it was time to relax and distract herself with something meaningless. It might, after all, be her last chance for quite some time.

…...

It didn't take Clarke long to realise her mistake. Or _mistakes_, because they were certainly plural. Later that evening, in a meeting of Lexa's war council, some older man suggested some ridiculous scheme of drawing the mountain men out with a decoy and then shooting them from the trees, and she found herself turning to share a can-you-believe-this-guy glance with Bellamy.

But he wasn't there.

And it hit her, there and then, with the force of a small dropship crashing to Earth, that somehow, somewhere along the line, Bellamy Blake had become a little bit essential to her. That he'd stopped being a _distraction_, and started being someone worth worrying about in his own right. And heavens was she worrying now. Worrying about his safety, because he'd gone into danger at her request. Worrying about the space in between them, because of the way she'd tried not to say goodbye. She couldn't believe that, not after the distress she'd felt so recently for shutting the dropship door without a proper goodbye. Would she never learn from her mistakes?

She supposed she'd been _trying_ to learn from her mistakes, by listening to Lexa's advice. She'd been trying to avoid another situation like Finn, but she should have known better. She knew Bellamy would never let her down like that. And now she'd gone and let _him_ down, and all because she'd believed too easily the words of this authoritative and awesome and - she had to admit it - beautiful stranger. She could see it now, she'd been trying to impress her, trying to learn how to be a young woman worthy of leading her people, but again, as always, _trying_ didn't seem to have got her very far at all.

All she'd managed to achieve was sending away the one person with whom she could be, totally, herself.

She thought back over the conversation that had landed her here and couldn't understand how she'd been swayed so easily by that thought about _putting the people she cared about in danger_. Because Bellamy had been in danger for all the time she'd known him, and was clearly not inclined to shirk further risks. Being in danger was what he did _best_. And staying strong, of course, and helping her to stay strong, and -

Maybe he did have quite a lot to do with love, after all.

…...

Bellamy supposed that the cold, hurt fury blossoming in his chest was probably not an inappropriate frame of mind for a risky undercover mission. Between his fury at the mountain men for taking his friends and his fury at Lexa for manipulating Clarke and his fury at Clarke for being manipulated, he thought he could probably find the motivation to kill every last person in that mountain if the opportunity presented itself. But he was also, he had to admit, at least a little distracted by the idea that he and Clarke were not currently on the same page. It had rocked his world somewhat, that realisation, and not in a good way. So wrapped up was he in his own anger that he didn't bother being disgusted by Lincoln's smearing himself in rotting animal flesh, nor alarmed by the plan unravelling when Lincoln took the red. Even the pain of being forcibly stripped, losing the hand-drawn map that was his last link to Clarke in the process, then hosed down with goodness-knows-what made little impact on the core of steel he seemed to have acquired.

If Clarke Griffin thought love was weakness – well then. He'd show her strength.

**a/n Thanks for reading!**


	11. Chapter 11

**a/n Thank you for the particularly lovely and detailed reviews on that last chapter! We're nearly there now - there's only one more chapter to go after this one. Happy reading!**

Clarke expected Raven to be annoyed at her constant need to check whether Bellamy had radioed, but by the seventh time of asking she thought the look in the other girl's eyes might actually have been sympathy, mixed with a fair old dose of understanding. She mused that, once upon a time, this might have worried her, but it hardly seemed to matter anymore whether anyone had their suspicions that she might be more-than-usually-interested in how her colleague was doing. It certainly didn't matter compared to the fact that he was in danger, and at her request.

She decided to pop by engineering yet again, just to be sure, although she knew full well that Raven would get her the moment anything happened. She just needed to be able to speak to Bellamy as soon as they got through to him, needed to make a start on telling him how much he meant to her.

Needed to make a start on making things right, she acknowledged to herself with difficulty, for the mess she'd made of sending him into Mount Weather.

"Raven? Anything?"

"How many times do I have to tell you that I'll send for you the moment I hear from him?"

"Yeah. Of course." She swallowed her disappointment and did her best to appear calm and collected.

"He'll be OK, Clarke."

"Yes. Yes, I know he can do it. I just – I need to speak to him."

"Yeah. I know you do." There was definitely _understanding_ going on here, she thought, as Raven wrapped her in a rather unexpected friendly hug.

"Wha – what was that for?" Of all the people she'd expected understanding hugs from, Finn's girlfriend had not been top of the list.

"I know how it feels." Raven said, voice rather damp. "To know that someone you love is in danger and unreachably far away. He'll be -"

Right on cue, their uncomfortable conversation was interrupted by the radio crackling into life.

"Camp Jaha, this is Mount Weather. Can anyone read me?" She froze for a moment at the sound of his much-missed voice, wondering quite how to go about speaking across the distance in between them.

"Bellamy?" She picked up the radio and attempted to collect her thoughts.

"Clarke?" He didn't sound as pleased to speak to her, she fretted, as she was to speak to him.

"Are you all right?" She asked, trying not to sound too transparently panicked.

"I'm fine."

"Thank goodness."

"We have to talk fast. Something has changed, they just locked everyone in the dorm." She felt her heart sink as he got straight down to business, seemingly uninterested in exchanging so much as a pleasantry. She reminded herself that their priority right now was supposed to be saving their people, not saving their relationship, but it stung all the same.

"But they're alive, all of them?"

"I think so, for now. Maya says that they're already using their blood, and things are going to get ugly in here real fast."

"Maya is with you?"

"She helped me escape. If not for her, I'd be dead." Her breath caught at that, at the idea that she had been so close to losing him. At the idea that she might still lose him. "And, Clarke, there are kids in here. We need a plan that doesn't kill everyone. Please tell me we have one."

"I hear you, but we can't do anything until you disable the acid fog. Raven is going to help you."

"Got it." He confirmed briskly, still very firmly in obedient soldier mode. "What else?"

"You have to figure out a way to free the Grounder prisoners. There is a whole army inside that mountain and they don't even realise it."

"Trojan horse. Good plan."

"What does Maya think? Is it doable?"

There was the smallest of pauses before he continued, sounding rather less than his usual confident self, she thought. "She says it's not a problem. Clarke, if I'm gonna pull this off, I need you to buy me some time. It won't be long before they realise I don't belong here, and if that happens -"

"That can't happen." She told him fiercely, everything that was in her rebelling against the possibility. "I'll come up with something."

"Come up with it quick. Can I speak to Raven, so she can tell me about this acid fog?" He asked, and she felt herself crumple a little at the realisation that he was trying to wrap up this conversation with her as quickly as possible.

"Yeah, of course. In a moment. But, first, I – Bellamy?"

"Yes?" He sounded more impatient than interested, she worried.

"I'm pleased we said goodbye." She told him, overruling her nerves. "You – you were right, and... I'm sorry. I shouldn't have sent you."

"Yes, Clarke, you _should_. We need to get our friends back. And right now I need to speak to Raven." She sighed in defeat, hearing that as a resounding rejection of her attempts at a meaningful conversation about her feelings, until he surprised her by continuing in a rather warmer voice. "But – you're forgiven. And I'm pleased we said goodbye, too."

"Thank you." She felt her knees give way as she sank to a chair in relief. He was alive, and she was forgiven, and as long as she kept the mountain men distracted, they would have all the time in the world.

"I'm looking forward to being distracted again when all this is through." She could practically hear his usual smirk in his voice at that, and she found herself ever more convinced that, actually, _love_ wasn't so far off the mark after all.

"Me too." She agreed fervently. "I'll speak to you soon. Stay safe."

"You too."

…...

Bellamy hadn't meant to thaw so easily on hearing her voice again. He hadn't meant to thaw at all, as it happened. He had intended to cling to his hurt pride for all he was worth, and show her that he didn't need her, not in the slightest.

But then that particular tone in her voice had showed him that she was hurting, and he had remembered that she was all alone, and how could he not care? How could he not melt at her obviously missing him? And besides which, he reckoned, she'd shown him plenty of support ever since the beginning, when she'd helped him handle his guilt over the culling on the Ark. The least he could do was to help her bear her guilt for the impossible decisions she was faced with now.

All the same, though, he couldn't help but wish things were rather less complicated between them. He seemed to remember it was simpler, once upon a time, when they were just two indifferent acquaintances distracting one another.

As it was, now, while he wandered the corridors of this hellish hole in the ground, late for his radio check-in and wondering how she might be coping with the delay, it seemed that Clarke Griffin was becoming rather too distracting for her own – or his – good.

He made it to the radio and got on with the call.

"Ark Station, do you read me? Anybody there?"

"Bellamy, you're late." Clarke's voice came back immediately, tinged with concern as well as impatience, as if she'd been standing by the radio waiting for the sound of his voice. "Every three hours means every three hours."

"Are you through?" He asked, tired of feeling angry with her yet angry with her all the same.

"Sorry. I just don't like it when you go missing." She sounded rather vulnerable and he forced himself to rein in his impatience.

"I know. But right now we have other things to worry about. They've started taking our friends, one from the dorm every couple of hours."

"Taking them where?" She asked surprisingly calmly, her instinct for leadership apparently overriding her concern for him.

"I don't know. We tried to follow them, but they went to a classified level. Maya borrowed the schematics of the vent system from her boss, and I'm still trying to find a way in."

"Bellamy, you have to find them."

"That's the plan."

"If you don't, all of this is for nothing. And then I sent you into danger for nothing."

"Hey, Princess. I don't take orders from you, remember?" He meant it to be comforting, but for a brief moment he worried that perhaps she might take it as condemnation.

"Thank you." He could hear the smile in her voice lightening the conversation, somehow, and reminding him that, actually, Clarke would always be able to understand what he wasn't saying.

"Any time."

"I should go." She sounded at least a little reluctant at the idea, he thought. "Raven will talk you through setting up that walkie so you can speak to us from anywhere. And I need to go talk Kane into going to this summit in my place."

"What? Why aren't you going?"

"Because I want to stay here, see whether I can do anything to help you."

"So I guess this means that once Raven gets this mobile radio unit working I won't be able to shut you up?" He asked, making it quite clear that he had no objection to such a state of affairs.

"I'll try not to distract you too much."

…...

Clarke was thoroughly convinced that she had never hated herself as much as she did in the wake of the missile strike in TonDC. She liked to think that she would never hate herself that much again, either, would do better, but based on her track record on this planet so far that seemed unlikely to say the least. She couldn't bring back those two hundred and fifty people from the dead, and she couldn't stop her mother from looking at her with that horrified expression, and she couldn't do anything in the face of Octavia's wrath.

So it was that she decided she should start with Bellamy. After all, he'd always been pretty good at forgiving her, so far. And logically she knew that this pattern couldn't last forever, and she was at least a little concerned that this might be the moment where his forgiveness ran dry, but she figured she had to give it a go. She took a seat a short distance away from camp, out of earshot of hostile grounders and curious sky people, and got out the small radio she had brought with her, and pressed call.

"Bellamy?" She noted that her voice was shaking and decided she really ought to do something about that.

"Clarke." She noted that his voice was hard and decided that she really ought to do something about that, too, if she possibly could.

"Octavia's fine, she's OK. Raven told me she let on that she was here." She babbled with less than her usual control. "I'm sorry -"

"Clarke, are we really doing this now?" He interrupted impatiently. "Over a radio while I'm in the middle of this mission?"

"I just wanted to say I'm sorry. Because I am, really. I'm so sorry." She thought she should probably try not to cry, but it seemed that such a thing was at least a little beyond her at the moment.

"It's OK, Clarke. I understand." He said, but he didn't sound particularly understanding. "You were just being Clarke, lying to everyone to protect them from the truth like you always do. I just thought that... maybe I might be one person you could actually tell the truth to?"

"Yeah." She hiccuped slightly at that idea, at the thought that perhaps she didn't have to bear all this alone. "I'll try to remember that in future."

"Here's hoping we get a future, then."

"We will, Bellamy. I ... I'm sorry, I'm not good at this." She kicked ineffectually at a nearby rock and wished he could be there in person. Everything always went better, somehow, when he was _physically _present.

"I don't think either of us is. Don't worry, we'll have plenty of time to talk when I get out of here."

"You'd better stay alive then."

"I'm trying. I have to go, Clarke, and get on with working out how I'm going to take down that acid fog tomorrow. I – we're good, OK?" She couldn't help feeling that he was trying to convince himself as much as her.

"Yes. Of course." She lied cheerfully, in spite of the content of that very conversation. "Stay safe."

She hadn't realised that there was such a thing as _normal_ on this damn planet, but now that things had grown distinctly _abnormal_, she was missing it enormously. Or rather, she was missing him, his physical presence, and his reliable warmth by her side. As she looked back on those two blissful nights they'd spent together back at camp, where the worst of her worries had been whether he was smiling too openly at Mel, she couldn't help wondering whether they'd ever be able to share such a comfortable routine again.

…...

He decided to call Clarke that night.

It wasn't a decision he could justify. It had no basis in strategy or logic or even sense. In fact, quite the opposite – he risked distracting himself when he could scarcely afford it. And he couldn't fathom why he'd want to speak to a woman who had lied to him about his sister's safety so recently, anyway. He felt that it was probably a little pathetic to forgive her as quickly as all this.

But as he settled into the maintenance cupboard that was to be his home for the next eight hours he found it an easy decision to make. He was missing her, and it seemed likely that she was missing him, and if he was at camp he'd have been with her at this time in the evening without fail, and probably rather enjoyably engaged in the sort of activity he was very much looking forward to if he got out of here in one piece. It was that thought which finally made his mind up, actually. He was fed up of the cold awkwardness between them over the radio in recent days as they struggled with this situation which was so abnormal and where they couldn't support each other in their usual way, and so he thought it was about time to inject a little normalcy into things. He might not have been in her tent that night, and she might not have been in his bed, but they could at least pass the time together.

Or so he hoped.

Attempting to exchange chaste chit-chat with a sexual partner wasn't something he had a whole lot of experience of and he wasn't really sure how to go about it. He didn't really want to ask about her day, because he was pretty sure it had been miserable as she finalised plans with Lexa for their upcoming assault on the mountain, and he sure as hell didn't want to tell her how wretched his had been. He just knew that evenings spent with Clarke were better than evenings spent alone. And that, if he was honest with himself, he was finding this mission in the Mountain pretty damn grim and was rather in need of her particular brand of support. Or the closest he could get to that right now - the sound of her voice rather than the feel of her fingertips.

Without giving himself the opportunity to back out, he started talking into the space between them.

"Clarke? Are you there?"

"Bellamy?" She sounded surprised and more than a little concerned to hear from him. "Hey – excuse me, Indra – sorry. Hey. Is everything OK?"

"Yeah. I just wanted to check in." He began, trying for a casual air and rather missing the mark.

"You did?" She was evidently somewhat confused by this. "But you checked in with Raven only an hour ago?"

"By check in, I meant chat to you."

"Oh."

"Great chat." He attempted to joke, feeling himself grow slightly nervous in the face of her less-than-warm welcome.

"Sorry." She said with the slightest chuckle. "You just surprised me, I guess."

"Is it really that unbelievable that I might want to chat to you?"

"I wasn't aware chatting was a thing we did."

"The thing we do is a bit challenging at the moment." He took a deep breath and had a go at getting to the point. "And, well, I was missing you, and we keep having these stupid arguments and apologies over the radio and I thought maybe if we can't spend the night screwing we could still spend it together like this?"

"Yeah. Good idea. Almost as great as that idea I had that time I walked into your tent unannounced and started stripping." He could hear the laughter in her voice and found his own face relaxing into a smile. "Are you sure you're safe to talk, though? I don't want them to find you out because of me."

"I'm definitely safe, Clarke. I'm sitting in a maintenance cupboard." He heard her snort at that.

"I'm sorry. I shouldn't laugh. But the image of that arrogant Bellamy I first knew when we first landed, now sitting in a maintenance cupboard chatting to me?"

"That Bellamy sucked. He deserves to be laughed at." He rearranged a toolbox and made himself a bit more comfortable.

"I don't know. He was pretty hot." He felt his face heat at that in spite of the distance between them. For all that he'd presumed she didn't find him _un_attractive, he wasn't used to hearing her say things like that openly.

"Are you saying I'm not hot now?" He asked, mock offended.

"You know what I mean." She told him, and he could hear the affection in her voice. This was, he realised, definitely the best decision he had ever made. He had been entirely right to call her.

"Always." He responded easily, relaxing back against the wall. Somehow that seemed like the right thing to say, even if the future wasn't something they'd ever really discussed before. Suddenly, that seemed like something he wanted to rectify. "What will you do, when all this is over?"

"I guess I'll worry about trying to keep the alliance with the grounders intact. I think that might get harder once we don't have a common enemy."

"No, I didn't mean that. I meant what would you do if, one day, _all_ of this was over. And you could just live on the ground and do whatever the hell you wanted."

She was silent for a long moment before replying. "I think perhaps I'd do more drawing. Try to find some plants that I could make paints from, even."

"Sounds good." He decided that maybe pointlessly meaningful conversations like this were a good time for compliments, and that maybe, he ought to give one a go. "You're really good at drawing, you know. I noticed when you showed me the map."

"Thank you." She sounded a bit confused at his clumsy attempt, he thought, but not unhappy. "What will you do, after?"

"I'm not sure. I've been protecting Octavia for as long as I can remember, and then the kids when we first got here. I'm not sure what I'd do if I didn't have anyone to look after. I wonder if any history books survived the apocalypse, maybe I could learn some more stories like my mum used to tell us." He mused.

"Sounds good."

"Sounds better than hanging out in a maintenance cupboard." He joked weakly around a yawn.

"You doing OK?" She asked with unexpected tenderness.

"Surprisingly, yes." After all, he was doing OK _now_, now that he'd heard her voice. "I'm used to going unnoticed, I spent sixteen years hiding O."

"Still, I imagine it's pretty frightening."

"Not as frightening as the look in your eyes when you sent me in here." He told her before he'd had chance to realise what he was saying. He'd not meant to mention that. He'd not meant for them to ever discuss it. He must have been more tired than he thought.

"I'm so sorry." She rushed out before he'd had the opportunity to even try to take the words back. "I wasn't thinking straight. I was in shock about Finn, and then Lexa told me that story about Costia and – and all I could think was that I couldn't let that happen to you."

He felt himself jolt awake at that, at her blatant comparison of the two relationships, and decided that, actually, this maintenance cupboard wasn't so terrible after all. No place could be completely awful, he thought, if he could hear Clarke tell him she loved him. Of course, she hadn't exactly used so many words, but he knew what she meant.

**a/n Thanks for reading!**


	12. Chapter 12

**a/n Thanks again for some super encouraging reviews last chapter. It's always bittersweet publishing the end of a story, but here goes - happy reading!**

Bellamy found the next day rather easier than he had anticipated. Sure, he would have to somehow figure out how to disable the acid fog, and then figure out how to free the grounders in the cages, and the remaining delinquents, but all of these things seemed rather more manageable in the warm afterglow of his conversation with Clarke. He felt lighter, somehow, since she'd revealed just how much she cared and he'd been able to drift towards sleep talking to her about everything and nothing. And the knowledge that she was coming for him, and that, if all went to plan, they'd be reunited by the end of the day had him walking with what could only be described as a spring in his step.

All they had to do was find a relatively peaceful way to save their friends without killing everyone in this mountain – so only a slightly impossible task – and then they would be able to get on with building a peaceful future of drawing and reading and caring for one another.

That was the plan, anyway.

His optimism lasted as long as it took Mount Weather Security to shut down his keycard. That was the moment he realised that they were onto him, that he was done with playing hide and seek in maintenance cupboards and this new game was rather more life and death.

Maybe Clarke would be receiving his head in a box, after all.

No. He couldn't let that happen, he decided, as he ran towards the acid tank with a guard hot on his heels. He couldn't let her lose another person she cared about. With that, he hardened his resolve and took down the man who was chasing him.

That guard wasn't innocent. None of these mountain men were innocent.

…...

Clarke burst into Lexa's presence chamber unannounced, bristling with anger. Lexa couldn't just go around ordering the death of one of her people. And she certainly couldn't go around ordering the death of the sister of her – well – her _person_.

"You ordered Octavia's death?"

"Octavia knew about the missile. That makes her a threat. If you weren't so close to her, you'd see that."

"It's because I'm close to her that I know she's loyal. Her brother is more important to her than anything." She stated fiercely, knowing how that felt. "She would never endanger his life."

"And you're willing to risk everything on that? On your feelings?" Lexa asked, appearing more agitated by the conversation than Clarke had perhaps expected.

"Yes. You say having feelings makes me weak. But you're weak for hiding from them." She informed her, letting out all the anger she felt at letting herself be persuaded otherwise, at all the mistakes she had made of late. "You felt something for Gustus. You're still haunted by Costia. You want everyone to think you're above it all, but I see right through you."

"Get out." Lexa snapped.

"Two hundred and fifty people died in that village. I know you felt for them. But you let them burn."

"Not everyone. Not you." Clarke found herself rather thrown by that, because it seemed to imply something that she wasn't entirely sure she could process.

"Well, if you care about me, then - trust me." She begged, deciding in the heat of the moment to make use of the heat in Lexa's eyes and process what it might mean later. "Octavia's not a threat."

"I don't think I can do that." Lexa said, sounding suddenly rather more fragile than usual.

"I can't sacrifice my people anymore." She resolved easily. "If you do anything to hurt Octavia, I'll tell everyone we knew about the missile."

"OK. Fine." She spat. "Octavia has nothing to fear from me." There was a short pause before she spoke again in a rather softer voice. "I do trust you, Clarke."

"I know how hard that is for you."

"You think our ways are harsh, but that's how we survive."

"Maybe life should be about more than just surviving. Don't we deserve better than that?" She wondered, and unbidden an image came to her mind, of Bellamy sitting by her side with a book and a broad grin while she sketched the shape of his jaw.

"Maybe we do." Lexa agreed, and while Clarke was distracted, smiling softly at her vision of domestic bliss, she found that the distance between them had grown somehow smaller.

And suddenly Lexa was kissing her, warm lips soft against her own, and the air was rushing from her lungs in a gasp of surprise and, she had to admit it, excitement. In another world, in another lifetime, she thought that probably she'd have found it only too easy to fall in love with this remarkable woman. But on this occasion she pulled away and forced herself to meet her eyes.

"I'm not - I'm sorry." She stuttered even as there was a commotion outside, grounder voices raised, and Lexa looked up, instantly alert.

"Bellamy." She said, and it was simultaneously a response to Clarke's garbled excuse and to the situation beyond the walls of this tent.

Clarke nodded briskly, not dwelling too long on what nodding might mean in this context. "He did it."

"You're right to have faith in him." Lexa commented, and she found herself thinking that there was at least a little sadness in her gaze as she said it. "Now we fight."

…...

Bellamy wasn't proud of blowing up the acid fog tank – it certainly wasn't in line with his orders to be _subtle_ in his sabotage, he conceded – but it was done, and that meant they were one step closer to the endgame and to Clarke running through those doors, an army at her heels, and to drawing and to reading and to the peaceful resolution he was fast realising he craved.

Of course, as soon as he felt that such a thing was within touching distance, it started slipping through his fingertips.

It all began when his radio cut out, immediately after the acid tank explosion, and whilst it felt a little like losing a lifeline he told himself that, actually, there was no reason why that should matter in the slightest. After all, he knew what the plan was.

But then it unravelled a little further when he went to fulfil the plan but realised that the plan had been rendered impossible by the disappearance of all the grounder prisoners, and suddenly he was the only occupant of the eerily quiet corridors. He didn't like this. He didn't like it at all.

He set out for the door to the reaper tunnels, deciding that, if nothing else, he could at least let those divisions of the army in. And, surely, Clarke being Clarke, she would find a way to solve the rest of their problems, to swoop in and save him from this failed plan that was crashing round his shoulders.

Saving him was what she did best.

…...

"It can't be over." Clarke found herself mumbling at the closed door. She would not, _could_ not accept this. She did not send Bellamy into that mountain to disappear from the radio – possibly dead – for nothing.

She was getting inside there if it was the last thing she ever did.

Without giving the others a chance to stop her she set off running, for the tunnels, for Octavia and Indra, for any chance, however slim, of salvaging something of this mission. Her fury carried her through – fury at Lexa, for claiming to care about her but then leaving her alone like this, fury at the mountain men for stealing away these people she cared about. Fury at herself, for getting them all into this impossible situation.

It wasn't until she noticed Octavia yelling at her that the fog of rage began to clear.

"What's wrong with you?"

"I am getting through that door."

"And that's your plan?" She asked, making it quite clear that she thought it a rather poor one. "Bellamy's counting on you. Everyone's always counting on you."

"Well, what do you want from me?"

"You trusted Lexa. You let a bomb drop on TonDC. You let all those people -"

"I am doing the best I can!" She lost control and interrupted the catalogue of her sins.

"Yeah? Well, it's not good enough."

She was about to attempt to defend herself when the door opened and there was Bellamy, looking relieved and well and _alive_, and before Clarke had time to gather her thoughts his arms were around her and he was kissing her, hard and fast, crushing his lips to hers. This, she thought, was a rather new development – since when did their relationship, such as it was, involve frantic kisses in the midst of rescue missions? In front of not just other people, but his sister, no less? It was not an _unwelcome_ development, though, she decided easily, relishing the much-missed taste of his warm breath.

"Bellamy?" Octavia tried to greet her brother, but it came out as a question, and even in the face of this crisis her heart melted a little at the way that he managed to summon up the smallest of smiles.

"Why does everyone find this so unbelievable?" He asked, keeping one arm around Clarke's shoulders as he reached out to hug his sister in greeting with the other. "Personally, I think it makes perfect sense."

"I missed you too, big brother." Octavia commented with a raised brow, clearly still not entirely comfortable with the situation.

"Where's your army?" Bellamy asked Clarke, as if it had only just occurred to him, and she found herself rather wanting to bury her face in his chest and hope the world would disappear for a moment.

"Gone just like yours. Say you have a plan."

"Not really. We need to talk to Dante. Maya says he's in quarantine."

"Clarke!" Jasper rushed out of the door and joined the reunion, a hazmat-clad figure who could only be Maya hot on his heels.

"Jasper." She broke free from Bellamy's embrace just long enough to greet them. "And Maya. Thank you, so much. For keeping him alive."

"We need to move." Jasper told them urgently. "Maya only has thirty minutes of oxygen, and the rest of it's on level five."

"Then we need to get her to level five." Clarke pointed out, confused as to why no one else had considered this logical solution.

"Level five isn't safe for any of us." Monty informed her, and she mourned again the passing of the plan.

"We'll take the trash chute again." Jasper suggested. "It will work."

"To get in, maybe." Bellamy said. "But every soldier in this mountain is there. We'll never make it out."

"We can do this. We'll split up." Jasper suggested.

"Okay. You guys go for Dante." Octavia instructed, pointing at Clarke and Bellamy. "We'll help Maya."

Clarke turned to Bellamy just in time to catch his decisive nod and half smile. And that was all the confirmation she needed, really, that this plan was the best they were going to get. She held fast to the hand he reached out towards her and followed him down the corridor into the depths of Mount Weather.

…...

Bellamy had expected to feel better with Clarke by his side, but somehow her presence only made the situation worse. The stakes were higher, now that she was in danger, and he was no longer alone in this mission. They'd made it to the command centre, and they had the president's father in their clutches, but somehow things were still not going to plan.

He wasn't sure why Clarke had shot the old man. And he was even less sure why she was threatening to irradiate level five. He was just sure that she thought she was doing the right thing, and that he needed to support her in that.

"Emerson is coming for us." Her panicked voice interrupted his thoughts.

"They deactivated my key card. Can you do that to his?" He asked Monty.

"That one's easy." He was relieved at his friend's answer, but his relief only lasted as long as it took him to notice that Cage Wallace was wandering away from the crowds in the dining room.

"Where's he going?"

"The dorm." Clarke confirmed his worst fears. "Monty, can you do it? Can you irradiate the level?"

"I can do it." Monty confirmed, sounding less than happy that it was so.

"Wait a second, Clarke. We need to think about this. There are kids in there." He reached out and put a hand on her arm, unable to condemn hundreds of people to their deaths quite so easily. After all, he knew what it was like, to cause the deaths of hundreds of people who'd done nothing wrong. He wondered in a slightly detached way if, perhaps, killing innocents was what had brought them together.

"I know." Clarke said, visibly uncomfortable, unable to meet his eye.

"And people who helped us." He reminded her, thinking of Maya saving his life.

"Then please give me a better idea." She met his gaze at last, expression slightly desperate and also distinctly challenging as she stared him down.

"I can't." He admitted at length, wasting precious seconds they didn't have. "Like you said, ideas are your thing."

She gazed back at him, more desperate even than before, silently begging him not to leave it at that.

"But I can stand with you while we do this." He told her, taking in the frightening scenes on the screen as Emerson prepared to blow the door. "It's just - if we do this, there's no going back."

"Clarke, we're out of time." Monty pointed out reluctantly. "I've done it. You pull that lever, and level five is breached." Slowly, painfully, she reached out to cover the lever with her fingers.

"I have to save them." Clarke told the room at large, tears coursing down her cheeks and eyes fixed on the camera feed from the dorm.

Bellamy allowed himself to look at those images for the first time, really look, and gasped at what he saw. Clarke's mother, strapped to a table, Raven on the one adjacent. Jasper and Miller and Bree and Kane cuffed to the walls.

His sister, fighting for all she was worth.

But that wasn't what made his mind up, not really. None of that mattered quite as much as the lost look in Clarke eyes as she grappled with bearing the burden of leadership alone.

"_We_ have to save them." He told her firmly, reaching out to cover her hand with his own where it rested on that lever. "Together."

…...

Clarke couldn't wait to get out of this mountain. The decision she'd had to make – or the decision _they_ had taken, she tried to remind herself – was without doubt the hardest of her young life, and coming so hot on the heals of the missile at TonDC she found that she rather hated herself. The death of Maya weighed on her heaviest of all, the young woman who'd saved Bellamy's life when she couldn't, and whom she'd now repaid with toxic air and a painful death. And she'd tried to be the good guy, as her mother had wanted, but it seemed that she was destined to fail and fail and fail again, to make mistakes at every possible opportunity.

She just needed to get out of here. She knew it wasn't brave, to want to run away rather than facing her fears, but she couldn't help it. Her gaze flitted around the dorm as she wondered how quickly she could make it to the exit.

Just as she was on the point of fleeing she saw Bellamy walking over, away from the corner where he'd been enjoying his reunion with Miller. She froze as he crossed the distance between them.

"Hey. Clarke." He reached out and cupped her cheek. "I know this is hard, but we'll be OK."

"How did you know I wasn't doing OK?" She asked, surprised out of her flight instinct.

"You've got that road to TonDC look in your eyes."

She supposed that was it, really, all the confirmation she needed that this flawed man was, in fact, utterly perfect for her. Perfect at reading her thoughts almost before she had thought them. Perfect at keeping her steady when she wasn't OK, and perfect at sharing a smile when the going was good.

She stepped forward into his chest, and his arms were around her before her first sob into his collarbone had even left her throat, and then she was weeping, oblivious to their audience, oblivious to the realisation that their secret was certainly secret no longer.

"Did that help?" He asked gently, when she was all cried out.

"Yes." She told him, and she knew that he was not surprised to hear it.

…...

Bellamy found that the choice he had made, to stand by Clarke and pull that lever, weighed heavily on him, but it was apparent that she was struggling with it even more. And that made sense, he thought, given it had been her idea, and taking into account how much she was still beating herself up over TonDC. He supposed that, perhaps, it might hit him more heavily in the coming days when he'd had time for it to sink in, much as getting Octavia arrested had somehow hit him so hard those first few weeks on the ground. And if that was the case, then at least he'd be able to lean on Clarke in turn, then, as he was supporting her through her immediate reaction now.

She'd grown quieter as the journey wore on, less inclined to continue with the forced conversation that had been a feature of the early part of the walk. She had made a point of talking to each of the surviving delinquents, and checking in with her mother, and staying by the side of Raven's stretcher for a while. And, of course, he had stuck by her side throughout, hand never leaving hers, relaxing into his relief at finding that, miraculously, they were both safe and well and reunited.

But she was evidently still battling with the emotions of the day, he noted, as the walls of the camp came into sight and she froze on the path.

"You're OK." He told her, because she would be, even if she wasn't quite _yet_, and because asking what was wrong seemed pointless at best.

"I don't think I can go in. I don't think I can do it." She told the ground at her feet and he felt himself begin to panic. She couldn't leave him, not now. Letting her leave now would be easily the biggest mistake of his life. He didn't want to be the monster he was without her, the monster he had been on the way to Mount Weather, the monster who had caused the culling.

"It'll be OK." He soothed her quietly, rubbing his thumb across the back of her hand.

"Seeing them every day, it's just going to remind me of what I did to get them here."

"What _we_ did, Clarke." He reminded her firmly. "What we did together. And we'll get through this together too."

"You think?" She allowed herself to look up for just a second at that, the slightest hint of relief showing on her face.

"I _know_ we will. You and me? We can do anything."

"I don't think that's strictly true, Bellamy."

"You might have a point. But – we're better together. You know that." He gathered his courage and told her the truth that she had told him so recently, and yet so long ago. "I can't do this without you."

"You can't?"

"Of course I can't. And... even if I could, I wouldn't _want_ to do it without you." He decided to take a risk and cradle her chin in his hand, tilting her face up so he could meet her eyes. "I would quite like not to have to do things without you at all, in the future, as a rule."

"OK." She said simply, and it was everything he had been waiting to hear.

He sighed in relief and bent to touch his lips to hers. He had intended it just as a brief peck, a bit of comfort, but somehow it didn't turn out quite like that. He'd missed her, this incomprehensible woman whose lips helped his world to make sense, and it seemed that she, too, was feeling that the week they had spent apart had been rather too long. And kissing her felt even better, now, somehow, after the events of recent days, when he'd been beginning to fear he'd never again feel her sigh against his mouth or part her lips with that particularly enthralling moan. But as it was, he mused as she tangled her fingers in his hair, he'd somehow ended up here, and the one thing he'd recently realised he'd always wanted – a peaceful future of books and sketches and _distractions _with this woman who was at once both his strength and his weakness – seemed to be, at last, within his grasp.

He broke away when he realised that a small crowd of delinquents had started whistling at them, with Monty cheering over and above them all. He slung an arm around Clarke's shoulders and started shepherding her towards the camp.

"Come on. I think we deserve a drink."

"Are you asking me out on a date, Bellamy Blake?" She asked him, voice full of laughter.

"I thought it was about time I did." He tried to justify himself, feeling suddenly nervous at this uncharted territory of a slightly more conventional _arrangement._ "It's been a while since we started – well – whatever this is."

"Whatever this is?" She cocked an eyebrow and peered up at him with a grin that he found he simply had to kiss away.

"You know what I mean."

**a/n Thanks so much to everyone who has read and enjoyed this story! If you're feeling bereft that this story has ended - good news! I have written other things! You might want to take a look at my profile for many more Bellarke options. I've just started a new little project called ****_Child of our Time..._**


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